(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Opera open thread: Nixon in China [1] ['Alonso Del Arte', 'Aashirs Nani'] Date: 2026-05-23 A couple of weeks ago, Donald Trump, technically the current president of the United States, visited China. It looks like he accomplished several things, but a lot of those things need the caveat “if confirmed by China.” According to experts from the Atlantic Council, Trump showed up in Beijing desperate to make deals. Whatever happened to “deal from strength or get crushed every time”? I’m starting to think that maybe Trump didn’t write The Art of the Deal. Or maybe it’s that his severe cognitive decline has destroyed his negotiating skills. Either way, the Chinese treated Trump like a chump. President Richard Nixon (R, 1969 — 1974) greatly accelerated the moral decline of the Republican Party. But when he went to China in 1972, he did accomplish something. The Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum boasts that President Nixon’s visit “resulted in establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries” and helped avoid war between them. Some might even say that President Nixon avoided a Thucydides trap. Nixon’s visit also inspired librettist Alice Goodman and composer John Adams to write Nixon in China, my favorite opera of the 20th Century (I’m choosing not to count The Stoned Guest, P. D. Q. Bach’s half-act opera, in the 20th Century). Here’s just the beginning of the opera in a production from the Metropolitan Opera. Now that the Washington National Opera has moved out of the illegally renamed Trump-Kennedy Center, maybe they could do a production of Nixon in China for the 2027-2028 season. Turns out they’re way ahead of me: a new production of Nixon in China is on the schedule for this year already. Natan Zamansky reports for Playbill that Washington National Opera has announced its 2026-2027 season, the first full season since the company severed ties with its former home at the Kennedy Center. The season will feature a variety of performances across five venues in the D.C. area, including four mainstage opera productions. The season will open November 7, with Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, presented at DAR Constitution Hall. The company will construct a temporary stage that extends into the audience for an immersive new staging by director and designer Walt Spangler. … Madama Butterfly will run through November 15. A new production of John Adams’ Nixon in China will also make use of the temporary stage when it is presented November 14-21 at the same venue. Soprano Renée Fleming and baritone Thomas Hampson will lead the production as Pat and Richard Nixon, with soprano Kathleen Kim reprising her acclaimed portrayal of Madame Mao in the modern classic that tells the story of President Richard Nixon’s 1972 diplomatic visit to the People’s Republic of China. Making a curious double feature of East-meets-West operas with Madama Butterfly, Nixon in China will be directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer in a multimedia production which includes historical archival footage. You might recall that earlier this year Renée Fleming backed out of a recital at the illegally renamed Trump-Kennedy Center, making Richard Grenell very sad. John Adams won’t be writing an opera about Trump’s trip to China, or anything having to do with Trump. In a 2017 interview with Gabe Meline for KQED, Adams said The idea of a Trump opera doesn’t interest me in the least. First of all, because so much of what he does is theater to begin with. It’s a terrible form of exploitive theater, but there’s no point in trying to make theater about theater. Furthermore, you don’t want to spend time as an artist giving your very best to a person who is a sociopath. He’s not an interesting character, because he has no capacity for empathy. The only empathy that he can extend is to his family, who are just extensions of his own ego, and beyond that, he doesn’t care. Everyone else is someone to be manipulated and controlled. The thing with Nixon was he was interesting because he was vulnerable. His weaknesses were marvelously mixed up with his idealism. At the moment in Nixon in China where he comes off the plane, and he greets Zhou Enlai, he sings this aria about being aware of himself as president, and being like the Apollo astronaut. He’s the pilot who’s piloting the ship through shoals. You can believe that there’s a part of Nixon that is actually noble despite all his paranoia and his faults. I couldn’t imagine doing that with Trump, because there’s just nothing there except this raw, very dangerous ego, and overwhelming vanity. Maybe if I live that long, I will find some story that reflects this crisis, but I would have to approach it from an oblique angle. Instead of “news has a kind of mystery,” Trump would sing “you’re fake news and you never smile.” Yeah, no thanks. In 2012, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described President Nixon’s trip to China as “extraordinary” in a speech at a conference celebrating the 40th anniversary of the trip. Trump’s recent trip to China was just a pointless excursion, not worth writing a song about, much less a 3-act opera. What do you think about Nixon in China? Would you buy tickets to the Washington National Opera production? 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