OPERA REVIEW: NIXON IN CHINA
7 FEB/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 4 out of 5

Wags of the time no doubt dismissed it as just another bull in a China shop story — but almost 40 years later, we look back at Richard Nixon's historic visit to China and are forced to conclude: Some bull. Some China shop.

And even while it began what has been a long slow thaw in relations between an isolated Communist China and the west, that visit also struck a few sympathetic chords in the world of opera, where spectacle plays as important a role as it does in politics. It started small, with the Houston Opera's 1987 première of a new work by composer John Adams and librettist Alice Goodman, titled NIXON IN CHINA. It documented, in highly theatrical form, the details of that ground breaking meeting between east and west, and the emotions that ran through it.

And something about it — nostalgia for what, in its time, was almost blanket news coverage, a growing taste for the rhythmic, repetitious work of iconic composers like Stravinsky and Glass or even an abiding love of the grand gesture — caught the collective imagination of a continent.

New productions have been popping up ever since. The latest of which is, almost coincidental with an opening at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, a  production that opened in Toronto under the aegis of the Canadian Opera Company at the Four Season's Centre Saturday, a co-production of several American opera companies. Directed by James Robinson, it's a pretty slick affair, featuring an often impressive set design by Allen Moyer, incorporating actual film footage shot during the visit, blended with an often impressive live cast, all of them treading (not always gracefully) a very fine line between character and caricature.

With baritone Robert Orth cast as Nixon and soprano Maria Kanyova as his wife Pat, the American contingent is rounded out by bass-baritone Thomas Hammons as a buffoonish Henry Kissinger. Meanwhile, on the Sino side, tenor Adrian Thompson is an aging Mao Tse-tung,  soprano Marisol Montalvo is his fiery wife Chiang Ch'ing and baritone Chen-Ye Yuan essays a dignified, even noble Chou En-Lai.

In an almost dreamlike way, it tells the story of mortals caught up in events they only suspect are far larger than themselves, and, overall, it makes for a biting, often funny meta-theatrical commentary on the flawed personalities involved. Which is not to say it doesn't have its touching moments. As Pat Nixon comes face to face with a world beyond her ken and conquers it by force of will, we feel the tectonic plates of two nations slowly shift.

But while this staging does a fine job of capturing nostalgic elements, thanks to a good dozen or more TV screens, echoing the way the visit was watched by most of this hemisphere, there are major missteps. While much is made of the fact that footage shot during the actual visit is being used, don't expect to see a lot of it, for sadly, these screens never come together to present a single picture large enough to be seen at the back of the hall. It's grand spectacle with much of the spectacle underplayed.

And while Pablo Heras-Casado impresses in his company debut at the helm of the COC Orchestra, he fails to modulate his hardworking musicians as they labour through what proves to be a powerfully filmic score, to allow the singing to be heard. Even though it is sung in English, surtitles tell too much of this tale.

But, for all its flaws, in its blending of the very modern — conventional melody is an elusive commodity here — with some grand traditions — an extended ballet sequence takes on an opera buffo tone in its staging — it proves opera is far more than museum art.