Renee Fleming stars in ‘Nixon in China’ in Paris

(AP) — After spending decades portraying generals’ wives, a countess and a courtesan, Renee Fleming walked gingerly onto the stage of the Bastille Opera in a blond wig, red coat and black gloves to depict Pat Nixon, former first lady of the United States.

John Adams’ “Nixon in China,” a 1987 work among the most acclaimed American operas, received its Paris Opera premiere on Saturday night to eight minutes of applause following a revelatory production by Argentine director Valentina Carrasco that replaced literalism with metaphor.

The lasting images were of a dark American eagle pitted against a bright red Chinese dragon and of ping-pong tables symbolizing both diplomacy and the quest for superiority.

“You really have to be in your mid60s to even remember this other than as it’s something that you learn about in school,” said Fleming, a 64-year-old soprano who bid farewell to the standard repertory six years ago. “I’m sorry, but in the context

of what’s going on now, Watergate doesn’t seem quite as horrific as it did at the time.”

Thomas Hampson, a 67-year-old American baritone, starred as President Richard Nixon, complete with hunched shoulders and a sweaty face he repeatedly dabbed with a white handkerchief. Hampson broke out Nixon’s stiff V-for-victory motion with arms outstretched during curtain

calls.

Hampson was a high school senior in Spangle, Washington, when Nixon made the seven-day trip to China in 1972, the first visit by an American president following the 1949 communist revolution.

“The whole effort of an American president to just simply shake hands across the globe was extremely impressive,” Hampson said. “Nixon will always and forever be Watergate. But there are parts of the presidency of Richard Nixon and parts of Richard Nixon that we just have to parse out and respect for what it is.”

Adams, now 76, made the trip from his California home and signed autographs during intermission, then joined the curtain calls.

He wrote the opera with librettist Alice Goodman.

“They are larger-than-life characters. They created these personae, as most politicians do, but between Mao and Kissinger and Madam Mao and Nixon, they’re kind of political archetypes and I think that just captures the public imagination,” he said.

“Nixon” launched at the Houston Grand Opera with realistic sets by Peter Sellars that were reproduced for the 2011 Metropolitan Opera premiere. The Paris Opera became the first major European house to stage it, and “Nixon” debuts at Madrid’s Teatro Real on April 17 in a John Fulljames staging that first appeared at the Royal Danish Opera in 2019.