Thursday, June 07, 2012

It's Prime Time in the USA

And tomorrow Nixon in China, a 20th c. masterpiece, is finally getting its long overdue premier at San Francisco Opera. I caught the Met HD broadcast during the 2010-11 season and fell over, it was so great. Very seriously, Nixon and Porgy and Bess are the two great American operas, taking in vastly different parts of the American experience and turning them into great music.

All that talk in the 1980s about how Nixon was a CNN opera was just silly and a major misunderstanding of Nixon. It's the composer and librettist's fantasy about what might have been going on in the hearts and minds of the characters. We never see the evil Richard Nixon, though we see the ambitious diplomat hoping for a place in history. We also see the tender husband. As a second-generation Nixon hater, it wouldn't have occurred to me that this side of him even existed.

Read SF Mike's preview. Go see it. You won't be sorry.


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