Among the Intellectualoids/Nixon at the Kennedy Center
Wooster, Martin Morse
• ................................................................................................................. AMONG THE...
...Sellars, Stearns began, "gets extravagant reviews on both sides of the spectrum...
...No less than five arts organizations (among them the Kennedy Center, the Houston Grand Opera, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music) commissioned the composition...
...Here is how the major characters were portrayed...
...It scans beautifully...
...Having digested such books as Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China, the authorized edition of the Selected Works of Mao 7 e-tung, and the immortal We Will Always Remember Chou En-lai, Goodman discovered that "certain facts became important...
...Sharp & Dunnigan 165 A Piper Ave...
...A milestone commanding future vistas of even greater promise," wrote the Boston Globe...
...The plot was, despite Sellars's protests, quite simple...
...1760-1805 Edited by Charles S. Hyneman and Donald S. Lutz In Two Volumes The editors have examined thousands of pamphlets, sermons, newspaper articles, and other important but inaccessible documents...
...Preface and acknowledgments...
...I've been a slut, I've been a queen, but I've never played anyone so narcissistic as to have no conscience...
...I don't daydream and I don't look back/in this world you can't count on luck," she explains...
...Hardcover $28.50 the set 0-86597-038-6 Paperback $13.50 the set 0-86597-041-6 Liberty Fund edition, 1983 ------------------------------------------Please send me: LlbertyC1 issi s WO KS OF FISHER AMES AS PUBLISHED BY SETH AMES Edited and Enlarged by W. B. Allen In Two Volumes F fisher Ames was a leading Federalist and an accomplished man of letters...
...Stearns then asked Craney and Maddalena to explain how they interpreted their characters...
...The only grandeur in the work was a few bits where Adams allowed himself to rob the dead...
...Johnson was selling a production of the new opera Nixon in China...
...As a Maoist revolutionary," she said, "I'd like to say that the Cultural Revolution was extremely democratic...
...7440 N. Shadeland Avenue, AF-4 Indianapolis, IN 46250 38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1988 "When we were in 1972, did we wear that...
...and as moderator, one David Patrick Stearns, USA Today's music critic...
...authorities...
...O Please send me a copy of your latest catalogue...
...A fat oaf...
...A hero built of platitudes...
...Nixon in China, Sellars said, is "really user-friendly...
...Sellars had abandoned his usual Japanese happi coat for an almost-normal light red suit...
...the composer, John Coolidge Adams (B.A., 1969...
...His greatest thrill prior to the China trip was running "Nick's Snack Shack" during the Guadalcanal campaign...
...Having stuffed himself with Henry Kissinger's memoirs, Sellars proceeded to ask Adams if he would do an opera about Nixon in China...
...residents add 6% sales tax...
...No, they were artists, and if Adams and Goodman fell short of Strauss and Hofmannsthal, they could, at least, agonize on cue...
...Prefaces, extensive notes, index...
...For seventy years, since the death of Gustav Mahler, classical music had been losing its emotional vocabulary...
...Chico, CA 95926 $27.50* THE VIDEO JUST COMPLETED, this documentary provides a triumphant account of some of America's greatest heroes and the medal they have earned...
...A socio-political morality play for the era of glasnost and Reaganomics," said the Chicago Tribune...
...arguments were more important to her than deeds...
...It wasn't just the vivid prose that thrilled me, or even Johnson's unnatural passion for the Red Army, but the chance of seeing hundreds of people burst and spew on stage like so many half-formed popcorn balls-well, you didn't see that every day...
...then, in August 1986, on the second year of a five-year contract, he was given a "sabbatical" that quickly became permanent...
...M.A., 1972...
...Hardcover $8.00 0-913966-58-4 Paperback $4.00 0-913966-59-2 Liberty Fund Edition, 1979 LlbertyPhss AMERICAN POLITICAL WRITING DURING THE FOUNDING ERA...
...Choice Volume I - 704 + xviii pages...
...Much more adept than Kissinger at bringing his boss down to earth...
...As for the music, it was clear that Adams had not recaptured the lost vernacular...
...The "oncein-a-lifetime event," she continued, would thrill me and chill me with its music, its choreography, and "its arresting stage set which includes a lifesize model of the presidential aircraft and an enormous poster of Mao, out of whose mouth the Red Army spews...
...His first production was a Henry IV in which the same actor played Falstaff and Prince Hal...
...Covers the origin of the Medal of Honor and its history from the Civil War through Vietnam...
...After all, she did kill people...
...Her date preferred to compare Adams to other contemporary composers...
...and the librettist, Alice Goodman (B.A., 1980...
...We and they say the same things, and I hope the Chinese position is extremely justified [in the production...
...We need a Cultural Revolution in our country...
...I approached Richard Nixon like any other character-except that he's alive," said Maddalena, who up close looked more like Mussolini than Nixon...
...Fuji of the World Wrestling Federation and flogs slinky Chinese cuties with a whip, presumably because they wear red dresses...
...In the second act, he dresses like Mr...
...by Martin Morse Wooster Goodman, sequestered in the halls of Girton College, Cambridge, was determined to produce a "heroic opera...
...Once I passed Mr...
...Everyone involved was graduated from Harvard: the stage director, Peter Sellars (B.A., 1980...
...we will be at the ABA BOOTH 4791 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1988 39...
...His next production will be The Marriage of Figaro set on the 61st floor of the Trump Tower...
...A staggeringly good piece of work," chimed Women's Wear Daily, graced by "superheavy cultural credentials...
...How humorous is the opera...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1988 37 Hired in 1985 to be artistic director of the American National Theatre (an attempt to create an American counterpart to Britain's National Theatre or the Comedie Francaise), he had chosen to wrench the bloody heart out of Western theater and stomp on it...
...A bitch...
...Does this opera deal with the truth...
...Opera's a great thing-you can sit there and think...
...As the musicologist Deryck Cooke once explained, by abandoning the musical vernacular, contemporary composers ad limited themselves in the same way novelists would have if they were only allowed to derive their inspiration from Finnegans Wake...
...Sellars drafted Goodman, and, in December 1984, they met for four days in Washington, looked at some tapes of Nixon's trip, and went to work...
...TWo others -De Nederlandse Opera and the Los Angeles Music Center Opera Association-joined in the "presentation" of the production, spending nearly $2 million...
...Mao, she wrote in a program note, derived his grandeur from "the way in which his writing takes the allusions of the Chinese literary pantheon" and for "his admiration of Western philosophy and the heroes of the American revolution...
...Adams, at the time, refused...
...Superdrama of a continuing nature," said Nixon aide Leonard Garment, not previously known as a music critic...
...As someone said during the second act intermission, "You have to admit, they did have a problem with Madame Mao...
...Sellars went on, comparing himself to the Cubists and saying that the Chinese objected to the opera because "Madame Mao and Mao go to bed together...
...IaberryPm/LibertyClas9cs LlbegPmss E PLURII:)US UNUM THE FORMATION OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC, 1776-1790 By Forrest McDonald E aving won their independence from England, the American colonies faced a new question of paramount importance: Would this be politically one nation, or would it not...
...Trudy Ellen Craney, who played Chiang Ching...
...Perhaps that is why a pre-show discussion I attended was nearly sold out...
...The discussion was held on the set of Shear Madness, a farce about deranged hairdressers...
...All orders must be prepaid in U. S. dollars...
...I read a lot about the Cultural Revolution, which horrified me when I found out millions had died...
...Original and stimulating...
...For two years," Sellars told the Washington Post, "all we had was the title...
...You set up a whole dummy structure and tear it to shreds...
...These were not hacks grinding out a musical...
...Law," said she approached the role of Chiang Ching "by reading a lot of biographies...
...The opera, she wrote, "offers us a rare chance" to view "in the context of an artistic setting" the "momentous 1972 journey of Richard Nixon to the thenclosed China of Chairman Mao...
...Every war and campaign from the Civil War through Vietnam...
...American Historical Review 386 pages...
...When everyone has to hate it or love it-that's fascism...
...He rose and walked forward and began to conduct a revival meeting, treating the audience as sinners whose only hope of salvation was his vision of the theater...
...Have a real experience...
...As I left, I was cheered by a couple near me who were ferociously debating the opera...
...You set something up and knock it down...
...In the second act, Pat Nixon visits a school and the Ming Tombs, then she and spouse attend the ballet and learn of Henry Kissinger's secret fantasy (flogging women...
...He is so busy weaving deathless phrases ("History is a dirty sow/If by chance we escape her maw/ she overlies us") that he has forgotten how to live...
...Their expensive educations had, if nothing else, taught the trio how to approach their work (or life...
...Foreword, editor's note, prefaces to earlier editions...
...We allow people to think about things differently...
...The problem with Nixon in China is that it's about politics, but is written and produced by people who don't understand power...
...Sellars on the street," he continued...
...since 1960 it has sometimes seemed as if composers did not want to produce work with any emotional content...
...Goodman spent seventeen months preparing, in couplets, a twenty-sevenpage libretto...
...I think our pro duction of The Red Detachment of Women is better than the original-a better score, and a better plot...
...Pat Nixon...
...NIXON AT THE KENNEDY CENTER I enjoyed the form letter I was sent one cold winter day by Mary Johnson, Media Relations for Music, The John R Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts...
...X411 orders from outside the United States must be prepaid in U. S. dollars...
...Every official account of the actions leading to this nation's highest award for heroism under fire...
...He followed this with a version of Sophocles' Ajax set on the steps of the Pentagon (with Ajax as a deaf Vietnam vet), and a production of Chekhov's The Sea Gull interrupted regularly by a laser light-show and a pianist playing Scriabin...
...With no first-hand experience of the subject, the authors write about politics with the certainty of teenagers who know exactly what Daddy does in the office...
...Richard Nixon...
...Stearns had prematurelygray hair and a perpetual squint, as if wearing an invisible pince-nez...
...No doubt that was why music critics across America were scaling incoherent heights in their praise of the work...
...Simply put, this is the finest and most substantive collection of polemic and expository essays from the founding era recently published...
...Are you telekinetic...
...To order, or for a copy of our catalogue, write: LibertyPress/LibertyClassics 7440 N. Shadeland Avenue, Dept...
...When you see what Pat Nixon's wearing, you will go crazy...
...Hardbound, 1105 pages...
...People go to a cultural event to have an Official Cultural Experience, which means `It was lovely.' " (Tell it...
...Color photo of the medals...
...Having to write a melody," he explained, "is not part of my repertoire...
...This handsome edition of Fisher Ames' work is essential reading for all students of the early American republic...
...With all the praise and all the lavish funding, I knew Nixon in China could be nothing less than a stunning, colossal failure...
...She resolved to define character through laboriously collecting information...
...I wasn't disappointed...
...Less than sixty seconds later, my front tire was flat...
...Realism and this show are two different things," she said...
...Nixon in China was the first Sellars production to play at the Kennedy Center since his dismissal...
...Put five people in front of a Picasso -you get five different reactions...
...In late 1984, Adams agreed to do the opera-provided the libretto was in couplets...
...Available from: The Medal of Honor Project 165 B Piper Ave...
...The opera was indeed sanctioned (and funded) by all the correct cultural Martin Morse Wooster is an associate editor of the Wilson Quarterly...
...He spends the first act staring at his ponderous gut and pretending to be James Bond...
...She lives to collect toy elephants and wear prissy red dresses...
...E Pluribus Unum is a provocative look at how that question came to be answered...
...The production was not, she emphasized, a dull history lesson...
...And there was the obligatory public television broadcast...
...We try to make all the characters and all the ideologies as eloquent as possible...
...I hope our presentation is not one-sided...
...Amen...
...Combines rare combat footage with exclusive interviews...
...At least Adams uses more than one note...
...While Goodman was procrastinating and Adams was attempting to reinvent a long-suppressed musical vocabulary, Sellars was busily establishing himself as the intellectuals' Dennis the Menace...
...Sellars chose not to answer the question...
...Yeah, or Phillip Glass," she added...
...The Cultural Revolution was the most thrilling event in the history of the world...
...Nothing tricky about him...
...Journal of the Early Republic Volume I - 842 + liii pages...
...We pay book rate postage on all prepaid orders...
...In the third act, all the characters lie in bed and dream about the good old days, when men were men, counter-revolutionary elements were counter-revolutionary elements, and soldiers could stand Richard Nixon's cooking...
...But reaching back into music's past, he told Harvard Magazine, has problems...
...Unable to perform nongodlike acts, like sex...
...In the first act, Pat and Dick land (in a wooden Air Force One), are greeted by dozens of Chinese, hold a discussion with Mao, and attend a lavish banquet...
...With tables and index...
...AMONG THE INTELLECTUALOIDS...
...n AMERICAN HEROES THE BOOK 1988 EDITION - Up-to-date and complete...
...AF-4 Indianapolis, IN 46250 Quantity Ordered Title Edition I Price Amount F Pluribus Unum Hardcover $ 8 00 Paperback 4.00 O Enclosed is my check or money order made payable to Liberty Fund, Inc...
...By all accounts, Nixon in China was created by a form of spontaneous combustion...
...Most of the score was repetitive ("doodlydoodlydoodlydoodly," said Bob Mondello in Washington's City Paper), an endless ostinato theme halfway between a hurdy-gurdy and a headache...
...Chico, CA 95926 $39.95 `Plus $2.00 shipping & handling, each...
...Nothing can match the experience of being at the Kennedy Center as history is replayed," she continued, as singers portraying actual characters guys like Nixon, Mao, Chou En-lai"and the Red Army burst into physical reality on the stage of the Opera House...
...Sellars was preparing a version of Haydn's Armida, and decided to set the production in Vietnam...
...Calif...
...Sellars said...
...Heroism, for her, consisted not of action, but inaction...
...Adams, meanwhile, wrestled with even greater problems...
...What I love about this opera is that it keeps changing all night long...
...Chiang Ching...
...There was time for one more question, from a woman in her early forties, with mousy gray hair and the officious tone of a minor bureaucrat...
...I've always wanted to stage one of the ideologically pure ballets, but too many people had died...
...Phi Beta Kappa...
...Well, at least it's better than Steve Reich," he said...
...Foreword, editor's note, index...
...What we're doing is democratic...
...Just like Joan Collins on "Dynasty" or Jane Wyman on "Falcon Crest," except she wears glasses...
...he was defending it...
...The only character allowed to have passions...
...Please allow approximately 4 weeks for delivery...
...So Adams decided to rebel from the "hot-house preciousness" of Anton Webern...
...I hope we don't shortchange women," Sellars added...
...Sheldon Travelling Fellow...
...About ten minutes of the opera were faintly interesting, namely at the end of the second act, where, if only for a moment, you could glimpse that Chiang Ching was something nastier than a simple television villainess...
...Faced with productions that routinely lost money (Henry IV, for example, lost $700,000), Sellars first moved to a smaller theater...
...Henry Kissinger...
...Nixon's heroism, on the other hand, derived not from his political career, but from "the various rented accommodations of the early years of [his] marriage...
...Haydn, it turns out, was really writing an opera about "truth and beauty versus psychedelics and free love...
...Chou En-lai...
...She was attacking the production...
...He's a deeply, deeply private person who chose politics...
...Mao Tse-tung...
...Of course it's funny," Sellars said...
...Lloyd McKim Garrison Prize for Poetry, LeBaron Russel Briggs Thesis Prize, and the Roger Conant Hatch Prize for something or other...
...In 1982, he and Adams were working at the Monadnock Music Festival in New Hampshire...
...Annotated bibliography, index for both volumes...
...W Subtotal Indiana residents add S% sales tax 'I'OTAI, Name Address City State/Zip d k t to Mail to: Liberty Fund, Inc...
...The wisest man in China...
...It isn't that hard...
...Just like your Uncle Bud from Dubuque, who can't stop telling old war stories...
...Volume II - 777 + xxxvii pages...
...Hardcover $30.00 the set 0-86597-013-0 Paperback $15.00 the set 0-86597-016-5 Liberty Fund edition, 1984 Prepayment is required on all orders not for resale...
...For a year, rail travel was free-and students got to know the country...
...The production wasn't unfair to Nixon, it simply removed his fire, reducing one of the most complex politicians of our time to a cliche-spewing fountain of niceness, much more like Jimmy Carter than the long-dreaded Tricky Dick...
...American Political Writing During The Founding Era: 1760-180.5 2 volumes Hardcover $28.50 Paperback 13 50 Works of Fisher Ames 2 volumes Hardcover 30.00 Paperback 15 00 y Please allow approximately 4 weeks for delivery...
...Craney, who without her makeup has the eager seriousness of a junior lawyer on "L.A...
...Utterly lacking in guile, her character is as open as a poached egg...
...Accompanying him on stage were James Maddalena, who sang Nixon...
...what melodies there were had been borrowed from Wagner and Glenn Miller...
...T he Kennedy Center's audience, accustomed to a steady diet of Broadway road shows, Gershwin revivals, and the occasional new opera by such Puccini-and-pasta composers as Gian-Carlo Menotti and Thomas Pasatieri, knew one thing about Sellars's American National Theatre-they hated it...
...Naturally, this means he has very little to say...
...Volume II - 713 + xii pages...
...The idea for the opera originated with Sellars...
Vol. 21 • June 1988 • No. 6
