Matthews Theatre, Princeton, NJ. Balcony (Seat CC3, $75).
Story. President
Nixon and Pat Nixon flies to Peking on Monday February 21, 1972 and is met by
Premier Chou En-Lai. They then go and
meet Chairman Mao and have a discussion.
This is followed by a banquet.
The next day, Mrs. Nixon is presented with a glass elephant before she
visits the Ming tombs. The evening is
spent attending a performance of a revolutionary ballet devised by Mao’s wife
Chiang Ch’ing. The last Act, described
as “The last evening in Peking” by the librettist Alice Goodman finds Mao and
Nixon reminiscing on their respective pasts.
Conductor – Richard Tang Yuk; Richard Nixon – Sean Anderson,
Pat Nixon – Rainelle Krause, Chairman Mao – Cameron Schutza, Madame Mao –
Teresa Castillo, Henry Kissinger – Joseph Barron, Premier Chou – John Viscardi.
The performers were miked up per the composer's instructions.
In the past couple of years we attended several Princeton
Festival events, this opera was the only event which we managed to go to this
season. I first purchased tickets for
the 6/23 performance but then there was a schedule conflict, it was good that I
could exchange the tickets, for free.
Overall the three-hour opera (including a 20-minute
intermission) was a disappointment. I
still remember this as being a momentous occasion in Sino American
relationship, and it was dubbed “Ping Pong diplomacy” at that point.
The opera told the opera in a straightforward sort of
way. First it was Nixon singing a long “aria,”
followed by Chou, then it was Mao’s turn.
While there had to be dialogs in between, I don’t remember much (or any)
of it. And the content of the monologs
was not particularly memorable, either.
Act 3 was the most puzzling. Reading
of the synopsis would lead one to think it would be over quickly (that idea/wish
was reinforced by the note that the program ends at about 5:45 pm), instead it
took about 30 minutes. I called it streams
of consciousness bothering on the surreal, Anne’s thought it was the two
disparate leaders sharing a common war experience. Both of us wanted it to end. Indeed this was one of the few music events that
I thought about leaving early.
The set was understandably simple. The main stage had a few risers populated
with chairs where the masses sat. They
could be at a banquet, or they could be the audience of the ballet, depending
on when they were in the program. In the
back were some screens on which images would be projected: such the Spirit of
America (Air Force One) or war scenes.
The snow fall was pathetically done with falling confetti.
That made the singing that much more critical to the
success of the opera. I discussed how I
felt about the libretto already; the music wasn’t that much better. If this opera is any indication, Adams is a
minimalist aspirant who fails to make his music interesting. Most of the music is of limited range, with
large intervals thrown in every now and then, but they just manage to add some grittiness
to the music. Going over my blog, I
realized I have seen quite a few of Adams’s works, including the Chairman’s
Dances based on this opera, and the opera The Death of Klinghoffer. The most common adjectives I used are “monotonous”
and “forgettable.”
A few interesting points. the opera began and ended with Mao’s body in
center stage (Mao’s body actually is on display in Tian An Men Square) with
Chou looking on; there were these three ladies that echo what Chiang was
singing, sometimes to good effect, I must say; and the composer specifically requests that the principal singers get miked up.
From left: Kissinger, Mao, Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon, Chou, Chiang, and the three secretaries.
Attendance was okay – not great – if the empty seats in
the balcony was any indication. Perhaps
the Festival organizers overestimated the level of sophistication of the
attendees?
There are very few classical concerts wherein I would say
the following at its conclusion: those were three hours I would never get
back. Unfortunately that’s how I felt
right afterwards, although with the passage of a few days (the opera was
Sunday, today is Thursday) I am a bit more charitable, but not enough to say “I
am glad we went.”
We grabbed something to eat at the Princeton Station WaWa
and then drove to Marine Park in Red Bank for a New Jersey Symphony outdoors
concert.
No comments:
Post a Comment