Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Act I, Scene I: Beginning - Orch Of St. Luke's/Edo De Waart
2. Act I, Scene I: 'Soldiers Of Heaven Hold The Sky'
3. Act I, Scene I: 'The People Are The Heroes Now'
4. Act I, Scene I: Landing Of The Spirit Of '76
5. Act I, Scene I: 'Your Flight Was Smooth, I Hope?'
6. Act I, Scene I: 'News Has A Kind Of Mystery:'
7. Act I, Scene II: Beginning - Orch Of St. Luke's/Edo De Waart
8. Act I, Scene II: 'You Know We'll Meet With Your Confrere The Democratic Candidate If He Should Win.'
9. Act I, Scene II: 'You've Said That There's A Certain Well-Known Tree'
10. Act I, Scene II: 'Founders Come First, Then Profiteers.'
11. Act I, Scene II: 'We No Longer Need Confucius.'
12. Act I, Scene II: 'Like The Ming Tombs.'
13. Act I, Scene III: Beginning - Orch Of St. Luke's/Edo De Waart
14. Act I, Scene III: 'Ladies And Gentlemen, Comrades And Friends,'
15. Act I, Scene III: 'Mr. Premier, Distinguished Guests,'
16. Act I, Scene III: Cheers

Disc 2:

1. Act II, Scene I: Beginning - Orch Of St. Luke's/Edo De Waart
2. Act II, Scene I: 'Look Down At The Earth,'
3. Act II, Scene I: 'This Is Prophetic!'
4. Act II, Scene I: 'At Last The Weather's Warming Up.'
5. Act II, Scene II: Beginning - Orch Of St. Luke's/Edo De Waart
6. Act II, Scene II: 'Oh What A Day I Thought I'd Die!'
7. Act II, Scene II: 'Whip Her To Death!'
8. Act II, Scene II: Tropical Storm
9. Act II, Scene II: 'Flesh Rebels'
10. Act II, Scene II: 'I Have My Brief'
11. Act II, Scene II: 'It Seems So Strange'
12. Act II, Scene II: 'I Am The Wife Of Mao Tse-Tung'

Disc 3:

1. Act III: Beginning - Orch Of St. Luke's/Edo De Waart
2. Act III: 'Some Men You Cannot Satisfy.'
3. Act III: 'I Am No One.'
4. Act III: The Maos Dance
5. Act III: 'Sitting Around The Radio'
6. Act III: 'Let Us Examine What You Did.'
7. Act III: 'When I Woke Up I Dimly Realized The Jap Bombers Had Given...
8. Act III: 'I Have No Offspring.'
9. Act III: 'I Can Keep Still,'
10. Act III: 'After That The Sweat Had Soaked My Uniform'
11. Act III: 'Peking Watches The Stars,'
12. Act III: 'You Won At Poker.'
13. Act III: 'I Am Old And I Cannot Sleep'

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9886 in Music
• Released on: 1990-10-25
• Number of discs: 3

Customer Reviews

Nixon in China
Back in the late 1980s, I watched the Houston Grand Opera's production of John Adams' opera "Nixon in China" on public television. I was blown away, not just by the performances, but by the music, which is absolutely gorgeous.

Unfortunately, we may never get to see that performance again. Why, I'm not sure. It is apparently not available, period.

But the recording is still one of my favorites. I have it on audiocassette from all those years ago. It's on my iPod too.

enlightening
Adams' "Nixon In China" does what real art is supposed to do: it focuses attention on matters and details we'd overlooked and refines our maps of reality. The portrayal of the Nixons comes across as poignant and surprisingly plausible. The libretto takes skillful advantage of the impressions we'd previously formed of the pair through the press. And the music is of course alternately adrenal and hypnotic.

Gray Temple (the Rev. Canon)

fantastic libretto explaining a great historical moment
I love the opera, although the beginning is more lyrical than the end.

When Nixon arrived in Beijing, he did not even know if he would meet Mao. Then, when the Spirit of 76 sets down and Chou meets him, Nixon's excitement over his presence on the stage of world history takes over. He explodes into song: "It's primetime in the USA. It's yesterday night. It's yesterday night." At his hotel, worry returns. Nixon's paranoid self takes over; no one appreciates what he does. But then, Mao calls. Right on his arrival he is to meet Mao.

Mao and Nixon hit it off. Nixon wants to talk politics; Mao prefers philosophy. Each anticipates the moves of the other. They praise each other's books. Mao gets blunt. China is sick of poverty. He "wants to hear the sound of industry blown on the wind." Dams, textile factories, construction cranes. Sometimes, Mao says, the left-wingers are fascist. The gang of four, you mean? says Nixon. No. Mao is speaking generally; he just likes right-wingers. Mao's song, oddly predicting world history after the opera is written, is entitled "Founders Come First, Then Profiteers."

Then Nixon and Chou meet at the Great Hall of the People for the banquet. Chou begins his toast, one of the more lyrical moments of the opera. "From Vision to Inheritance" -- the legacy of the Maoists! We have united the land and brought peace to our land, and we are at peace with the world. Now, we wish to join hands with the Americans and build a rich powerful China. Then the drinking begins! An ecstasis! This drinking song is better than the ones in Wozzeck or Carmina Burana.

And that is just Act 1.

Act 2 brings us modern housewife Pat Nixon and flamboyent Chiang Ching. Mrs. Nixon is taken by the Chinese peasantry. She gets to see the pigs. She reminisces about her farm life. She sees rural China as a beautiful place for a picnic. She understands that this is the beginning of peace, that the trip is a massive success. Chiang Ching stages her competing Red Ballet. The martial music from the overture returns. Is the play history or reality?

Finally, Act 3 brings us 'the morning after.' History is finished with our men and women leaders of America and China. They are passing from the world stage. They have lived for that moment. Romantic moments there have been -- cooking burgers for pilots in the South Pacific, life in the Yenan caves, making it in a Washington apartment on a military paycheck, the Long March, being strafed by a zero in the midst of a rain storm, making revolution.

With Nixon in China, you get great music, great biography and great history. Our entire present era of world prosperity is a result of the events surrounding Nixon's visit to China, opening up the Generation of Peace about which he spoke. Mao's vision of a modern China, where Confucious is dead and where the sounds of industry are borne on the winds. has come true.

An mythmaking moment turned in to Great Opera, with a killer academic, well-researched libretto. A world-uniting opera with Chiang Ching's 'opera within an opera.' (And give that third act some time to grow on you.)
Great art work on the jewel box.