As a young man in his 20s, Sellars traveled to China in the 1980s to see a country he was fascinated with. It was also Sellars' premiere at the Met as a director. This time, Nixon in China was Adams' premiere at the Met as a conductor, and he wielded his baton to his own score. Met general manager Peter Gelb, said that when he took office in 2006, he wanted to redress the opera house's most significant repertoire omission - the absence of works by Adams - and what he had in mind was Nixon in China.īut since Adams had just launched his Doctor Atomic, that opera became his premiere at the Met. But it wasn't until Feb 2, the eve of Chinese new year in 2011, that Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center in New York staged the piece.

Over the last 24 years, the opera has been performed by opera houses across the world and is considered a masterpiece. The opera Nixon in China made its world premiere at the Houston Grand Opera, 1987, with Adams' score, poet Alice Goodman's libretto, Mark Morris' choreography and Sellars' staging. Adams, less known then, was skeptical at first but he soon realized it was a great idea to 'find our mythology in our contemporary history'. He proposed the idea to young composer John Adams at a New Hampshire music festival in 1983.

Chen Weihua reports from New York.Īmerican theater director Peter Sellars was working on Haydn's Armida and reading Henry Kissinger's memoirs when he suggested an opera about former US president Richard Nixon's historic trip to China. John Adams' musical masterpiece has made its long-awaited debut at New York's Metropolitan Opera, and a prominent feature of it is the revolutionary ballet The Red Detachment of Women. While watching The Red Detachment of Women, former US president Richard Nixon (James Maddalena) and his wife (Janis Kelly) are drawn to the protagonists' fates.

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