Ping-Pong Diplomacy

Nixon in China - an Opera by John Adams

I have long admired the work of John Adams, the composer (not the first father/son US Presidents). I became an unabashed fan when I heard his piece, ‘My Father Knew Charles Ives.’ Googling it, I see that I attended one of its earliest performances in 2003. The piece was commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony and first performed by that orchestra, under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas.

MTT, as we affectionately call him in San Francisco, was the conductor of the SF Symphony for 25 years. A musical prodigy from a musical family, MTT has always been passionate about two things - contemporary symphonic music and education. The first season he was with the San Francisco Symphony, he presented an American work in each subscription program. MTT believes that American orchestras should champion ‘American composers, living and not…. a bit outside the mainstream’.

I was often in the audience for a program that included a modern or contemporary American composition. To show their displeasure, the less adventurous concert goers would walk out before the piece began and return afterwards. Some contemporary pieces are very short. The traditionalists would have to rush back in to hear a work by a composer safely included in the canon. I often wondered what those conventionalists were like in other aspects of their circumscribed lives.

A critic once called MTT ‘the most gifted and effective educator about music for the general public since Leonard Bernstein.’ Now that I think about it, my introduction to John Adams’ piece surely preceded its premier. I listened to the orchestra practicing it during an Open Rehearsal. When MTT conducted, he would often turn towards the audience and explain what was happening. I enjoy listening to a difficult passage repeated and perfected. But it is frustrating not to hear a piece played from beginning to end. On my way out of the rehearsal that morning, I bought a ticket for that evening’s concert, assured that I would hear Adams’ work uninterruptus.

As I listened to ‘My Father Knew Charles Ives,’ that morning, I heard several bars of a familiar tune. Once I identified it, I was transported back a decade. To a house in Healdsburg, north of San Francisco, in Wine Country. A house we rented with friends for a long weekend. My 9 year old daughter and our friends’ daughter were kneeling in front of our newborn son, who I had just put down on the sofa. They began singing to him, a song they had learned at school that week. It was the Shaker folk song, ’Tis a Gift to be Simple.’ It was bars of that song that I heard in Adams’ piece.

Of course, Adams isn’t the only composer who makes references to earlier pieces and to non-symphonic ones. MTT produced a documentary on Gustav Mahler, in which he “journeys to rural stretches of the Czech Republic to discover the origins of Mahler’s music in street bands, folk songs and nature….”

Adams has claimed that unlike other contemporary composers, he isn’t concerned with originality. Mahler and J.S. Bach and Brahms weren’t particularly concerned about originality, either. As Adams noted (in a 2022 interview), the performances of his pieces (and those of other composers) isn’t always the same. “Different singers and different conductors and different violinists — they give a completely new point of view on something. The pieces are constantly being reborn.”

In that interview, Adams referred to the literary critic Harold Bloom’s phrase, “the anxiety of influence.” Adams explained that all creatives, no matter what field, live “under the shadow of the greats that preceded us.” There is both “the anxiety of, is what I do even comparable with this great art? (A)nd has somebody already thought of it before?” In reference to his operas, Adams claimed that he has always been inspired by “the way a great pop artist treats the English language.” because “the English language in the classical tradition… is always a little bit pretentious.…”

To Adams, for much of the 20th century, composers of symphonic music tried to make their work inaccessible to average listeners. Adams calls that time, “the bad old days.” Which has resulted in audiences being wary of anything new. He imagines it this way, a concert goer looks at a program and says to himself, “Oh, there’s a piece by John Adams .…He’s still living, so it’s probably going to be an unpleasant experience.”

When I walked by the Opéra Bastille one day and saw Adams’ ‘Nixon in China’ advertised, I was tempted. A few days later, when I received an email from the Operas de Paris offering me a 20% discount for an upcoming matinee, I was convinced. Then I read the line-up - Renée Fleming as Patricia Nixon, Thomas Hampson as Richard Nixon with Gustav Dudamel conducting. It does not get any better than that.

How to explain Nixon’s trip to China in 1972 in two, maybe three words? Ping-Pong Diplomacy. In 1950, when China got involved in the Korean War, the United States initiated an economic containment policy. A little over 20 years later, both countries realized that a detente could be useful. China wanted to improve relations with the United States to offset its deteriorating relationship with the Soviet Union. The U.S. thought China could help in peace negotiations with North Vietnam.

And that is where the U.S. Table Tennis Team, or at least one of its members, comes in. The team was in Japan in 1971 for the 31st World Table Tennis Championships. As was the Chinese team. Glenn Cowan, a member of the American team, missed the team bus one afternoon after practice. Cowan hitched a lift on the bus carrying the Chinese team. Most members of the Chinese team ignored him. Zhuang Zedong, a three-time world champion, didn’t. He shook Cowan's hand and spoke to him through an interpreter. At the end of the bus ride, Zedong gave Cowan a a silk-screen scene of the famous Huangshan Mountains. But Cowan didn’t have any way to reciprocate, at least on the bus. The next day, Cowan gave Zhuang a T-shirt with a red, white and blue peace symbol and the words, ‘Let It Be’ on it. (Figure 1)

Figure 1. American Ping Pong Player Glenn Cowan with Chinese player Zhuang Zedong

It was the perfect moment to test the waters and see if a visit by the sitting U.S. President might be agreeable to the People’s Republic of China. So Henry Kissinger secretly flew to China to meet with PRC officials. Less than 10 months after the ping pong games, Kissinger returned to China with Richard and Pat Nixon in tow. (Figure 2) BTW, Kissinger celebrated his 100th birthday in May and paid a surprise visit to China in July, 52 years after that first secret visit. While he was there, Kissinger proclaimed that he was China’s friend, and declared that “Neither the United States nor China can afford to treat the other as an adversary.” (Figure 3)

Figure 2. Nixons in China, 1972

Figure 3. Kissinger in China, 2023

And now a bit of history about Adams’ opera. In 1983, theater and opera director Peter Sellers suggested to John Adams that he write an opera about Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China. Which he did. The opera premiered in Houston in 1987. It was Adams’ first opera. Since then he has written other operas on topical themes, like The Death of Klinghoffer in 1991, based on the Palestinian Liberation Front’s hijacking of the cruise ship, Achille Lauro and the murder of one of the ship’s passengers. And Doctor Atomic, written in 2005, about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb who is back in the headlines these days because of Christopher Nolan’s biopic. (Figs 4, 5)

Figure 4. Scene from John Adams opera Doctor Atomic

Figure 5. Oppenheimer, film by Christopher Nolan

Adams’ operas, with text by Alice Goodman, are not re-enactments of the events themselves, but rather “character studies of the people involved in historical events.” In ‘Nixon in China,’ as one critic puts it, it is the Nixons, the Maos and Chou En-lai “not only in China but also in bed and in song. (T)he opera has always been less a moral statement than an examination of what drives powerful men. Insecurity drives them, and women drive them.”

When New York critics first saw ‘Nixon in China,’ they mocked it, “as a CNN Opera of no lasting merit.” But when it was finally staged at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York in 2011, it was “hailed as a classic…” A turnaround not unlike the toast Nixon offers to his hosts in Adams opera, “I opposed China. I was wrong.”

I love opera because it is a marvelous combination of stage sets and costumes, music and emotions. So, the period and person appropriate outfits worn by Renée Fleming as Pat Nixon and the hohum suits in which Kissinger and Nixon were attired weren’t much of a draw (see above, Figure 2). The awkward paper maché Air Force 1, as it landed in China, reminded me of a piñata, as did the American Bald Eagle that replaced it. (Figures 6, 7, 8) The dragon that accompanied Pat Nixon in one scene (see first image) and out of which Gustav Dudamel popped to take his well deserved bow at the end, was familiar to me. (Figures 9) The same dragon or one of his/her siblings makes an appearance almost daily somewhere in San Francisco’s Chinatown to herald the opening of a Chinese business, most often a restaurant.

Figure 6. Nixons landing in China, from Nixon in China

Figure 7. Nixons actually landing in China, 1972

Figure 8. Bald Eagle, Nixon in China

Figure 9. Dudamel stepping out of the dragon and taking his bow, Nixon in China

One recurring visual element was completely delightful and from what I can tell, original to this production: People playing Ping Pong. (Figures 10, 11) Balls flew from one racket to another. The pinging sound was very musical. The ping pong players were graceful and energetic. And it was easy to keep score - the Chinese players were dressed in red. The American team wore blue. As the game progressed, the Chinese players kept hitting their balls higher and higher. By the end, it was a free for all, ping pong balls flying everywhere. Eventually even the ping pong tables got into the act and were cleverly transformed into the landing strip for Air Force 1. One critic described the ping pong game this way, “Carrasco (the director of the Bastille opera) uses th(e) graciousness of the sport wisely.” Another reviewer offered this comment,“Diplomacy is a sport and all sport is political.”

Figure 10. Ping pong game, Nixon in China

Figure 11. Ping Pong Players, Nixon in China

The ping-pong games were fun and lively and beautifully choreographed. But there were many somber moments like this one, between the second and third acts, we saw a segment of Isaac Stern’s 1981 documentary “From Mao to Mozart”. A personal account of the suffering imposed by the Cultural Revolution on teachers of western music. It was almost unbearable to watch.

One critic commented that while including the documentary was “…a very strong denunciation of the violence of the Cultural Revolution… (I)t is neither in Adams’ score nor in Goodman’s libretto…” Yes, but as Adams noted about his symphonic pieces, everybody brings something to the interpretation of a piece of music. With opera, in addition to the conductor and the orchestra and the soloists, there is the director, the set designer, the costume designer and the choreographer. Of course there are bound to be different interpretations. When I got home, I watched the entire documentary. It was heartbreaking.

The second scene of the first Act was also chilling. The action unfolds in the basement of Mao’s library. There is torture, there is book burning. A scene of a Chinese book burning 50 years ago was a reminder that people are still burning books in Tennessee. Books are still being banned in the United States in 2023.

One reviewer was critical about what he called the director’s uneven treatment of Mao and Nixon. The opera took place in China, so I guess it was easier to show that country’s sins. But if she could show a documentary about Chinese violinists being tortured, she could have shown one of Kent State students being shot by the American national guard during Nixon’s presidency. It is true as one critic noted, two more unlikely partners in a “diplomatic relationship that changed how politics could function in the middle of a not-so-Cold War” would be difficult to find.

Paris and the rest of Europe, the United States and the rest of the world, on the brink as we are, of a nuclear World War III or maybe only an inadvertent (or intentional) destruction of one of the four nuclear sites in the Ukraine, are as much “in need of a political bridge as they were when Nixon went to China.” 

Copyright © 2023 Beverly Held, Ph.D. All rights reserved

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