John will be covering the role of Mao Tse-Tung in Elkhanah Pultizer’s production of John Adams’ Nixon in China with the Washington National Opera.

There’s a story behind the superpowers.

Music by John Adams / Libretto by Alice Goodman

Oct. 31, Nov. 2, 6, 8m, 11 & 14 (2020) in the Opera House
In English with Projected English Titles
Composed 1987
Co-Production with LA Philharmonic

Nixon. Kissinger. Mao. Political titans converge in China in February 1972 for “the week that changed the world.” But the headlines will miss one side of the story: the inner lives behind the history.

Celebrated as a 20th-century classic, John Adams’s Nixon in China captures President Richard Nixon’s landmark visit with Chairman Mao Tse-tung and the media frenzy that followed. Adams’s sweeping music fuses national and personal histories, from Pat Nixon’s vision for a peaceful world to Madame Mao’s defiant reflection on the Cultural Revolution. Nixon in China’s final aria reverberates with a timely question for Washington audiences, asking: “How much of what we did was good?”