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List Price: $26.99 | | Label: NAXOS AMERICAN
Salesrank: 19507
Released: October 27, 2009 |
| Our Price: $18.44 |
| Used Price: $39.67 |
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| Media: Audio CD |
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Adams: Nixon in China Track Listing:
Disc 1:
Disc 2:
Editorial Review:
A longtime collaborator of John Adams and champion of his music, Marin Alsop directs this live recording of Opera Colorado's 25th Anniversary Celebration production of Nixon in China, presented at Denver's new Ellie Caulkins Opera House during the 2008 National Performing Arts Convention, and featuring an internationally recognized cast.
Alice Goodman's epic libretto and John Adams's distinctive music weave together a colourful fabric of actual events from President Nixon's historic visit to the People's Republic of China with intimate examinations of the opera's real life characters.
The spectacle, drama, humor and pathos of this masterpiece remain as compelling today as when the opera was premièred in 1987.
Adams: Nixon in China Reviews:
Wow what a great recoding of this opera! 
2009-12-17 - Normally I spend several times sitting and listening to a new product of a familiar work, but I immediately found this version and extended edition of Nixon in China quite appealing. Especially noteworthy is the arrangements and the great recording dynamics one can hear when playing this work on a middle to high end system with great Bower and Wilkins speakers. But it carries through when using the ipod recording as well. I love this recording! Highly recommended for anyone who follows John Adams or loves minimalist opera.
Long overdue
2009-10-29 - John Adams's Nixon in China is one of the most important American contributions to opera from the 20th-century, and a new recording to succeed Edo de Waart's magnificent cut with the Orchestra of St Luke's is FAR overdue.
The opera itself is a wedding of Adams's unique form of minimalism with Alice Goodman's incomparably beautiful libretto. Unlike Glass's almost purist form of minimalism or Reich's deep interest in textures and harmonic relationships, Adams's writing is, by and large, melodic and even somewhat conventional at times. The Colorado Symphony are in top form, playing assertively and with audible gusto.
The libretto is in itself a masterpiece--Anglican minster Alice Goodman's work is simply breathtaking in its expression and beauty. And Alsop allows the words to breathe and soar--in many spots (such as the hilariously complicated banality of the "Cheers!" chorus at the end of Act One), the libretto is clearer on this recording than in de Waart's larger cut.
Marin Alsop's recording strikes a very different ambience and tone from de Waart's. Immediately, the listener can hear a much broader, perhaps more epically "operatic" tone from the cast. Robert Orth's Nixon is less nimble than James Maddalena's, sharper and somewhat more nasal. His earthy interpretation is full of spontaneity and gives Nixon a more diverse portrait than Maddalena's very clean singing. Perfectionists will be slightly put off by his bent tuning and tendency to speak, rather than sing, at exclamatory points in the libretto, but the result is dazzling and has the stamp of authenticity all over it.
A good sampler is the famous accompanied aria, "News Has a Kind of Mystery"--from this, a listener can gauge whether or not Orth's more spontaneous Nixon is worthwhile or not.
Marc Heller's Chairman Mao has a tendency to sound stuffy and old--this might be more "historically accurate" to the narrative, but it is a little off-putting at times, especially in some of Adams's beautiful writing for Mao--the passage, "The world to come has come..." from "Founders come first", for example. Here, John Duykers in de Waart's cut offers a powerful and moving, but also carefully subtle, treatment of this brief passage. Heller's heavy operatic tone is somehow less satisfying.
The high octane aria from Tracy Dahl (Madame Mao), "I am the Wife of Mao Tse-tung" is given a full-throated, effortlessly thunderous reading demonstrating Dahl's magnificently powerful soprano. The contemplative side of the opera is not left out: Chou En-Lai's beautiful aria before the end of the first act is given a wonderfully nuanced performance.
Naxos deserve a great deal of praise for this production: the sound quality is spot-on, the cast and orchestra give convincing, top-notch performances, and all at a nice price. As I have bought a digital copy of the set, I don't know whether it comes with a copy of the libretto or not--most likely it does.
