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John Adams: Nixon in China

4.0 165 mins Music   2023
Camera Lucida  
Director(s): Valentina Carrasco François-René Martin

In February 1972, the American president Richard Nixon went to China to meet Mao Zedong. In the context of the war in Vietnam and the cold war, this encounter marked a turning point in Chinese‑American relations. John Adams, a major musical figure of the last forty years, made this event of contemporary history the subject of his first opera. Nixon in China tackles the political thaw instigated by ping-pong diplomacy, begun by the invitation of the American table tennis players by their Chinese counterparts, one year before the presidential visit. A mesmerising work in which the pulsations and repetitions typical of minimalism are combined with melodic lines of great lyricism. For its entry into the Paris Opera repertoire, this work has been entrusted to the director Valentina Carrasco, who underlines the importance and the mediating power of Chinese national sport in history.

Casts of John Adams: Nixon in China

Thomas Hampson

as Richard Nixon

Renée Fleming

as Pat Nixon

Xiaomeng Zhang

as Chou En-Lai

John Matthew Myers

as Mao Zedong

Joshua Bloom

as Henry Kissinger

Kathleen Kim

as Chiang Ch’ing

Gustavo Dudamel

as Self - Conductor

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