A milestone in history, a hyped Met premiere and a gaggle of A-list artists added up to something less than a sensation Wednesday night when the Metropolitan Opera offered its first performance of John Adams’ “Nixon in China.”
The 1987 opera treats the president’s 1972 diplomatic trek as a jumping-off point, offering little action but plenty of reflection. In the nearly four-hour work, Nixon takes a meeting with Chairman Mao, First Lady Pat Nixon tours farms and then all three, plus Mao’s wife and Premier Chou En-lai, muse on the past.
The showpiece of this opera is the second act finale, in which the Nixons attend a propaganda ballet. As campy choreography by Mark Morris swirls around them, they become characters in this play within the play.
Adams’ music throbs with hypnotic rhythms and saxophone-heavy orchestrations. Less successful is the self-consciously poetic libretto by Alice Goodman, in which everyone sounds like he’s spouting that verse you skip over when reading The New Yorker. Director Peter Sellars has re-created his original staging so faithfully, the show feels like a museum piece.
But the audience — which included Nixon’s daughter, Tricia Nixon Cox — enjoyed some fine performances, particularly that of Scottish soprano Janis Kelly, whose lyric voice and flawless American diction lent charm to Pat Nixon. Her dreamy second-act aria, “This Is Prophetic,” proved the evening’s musical highlight. Of equal stature was Russell Braun, his baritone revealing warmth in the reserved Chou En-lai.
Tenor Robert Brubaker, unfazed by the stratospheric range of Chairman Mao’s outbursts, created an eerie character, verging on a mad-scientist caricature. Just as creepy was soprano Kathleen Kim as Madame Mao, nailing the high notes of her bombastic aria “I Am the Wife of Mao Tse-Tung” but fluttering out of tune in the third act.
The biggest disappointment of the evening was Nixon himself, James Maddalena returning to the role he created nearly a quarter of a century ago. Even when the acoustics were in focus, the baritone struggled just to bark out most of the notes of this role. It’s a shame, because physically he captured Nixon’s stiff demeanor down to the tiniest gesture.
As the lights dim on “Nixon in China,” Chou En-lai sits to reflect on his life’s work: “How much of what we did was good?” This admirable but uninspiring production might leave the Met wondering the same thing.