He wasn't a crook, yet

At the beginning of Nixon in China, Chinese peasants sing in flowery, ornate language of the power of the peasantry. After listing a series of rules for masters to follow ("Do not mistreat the captive foe/Respect women, it is their due"), they suddenly turn fierce, accompanied by a dramatic modulation. "The people are the heroes now/Behemoth pulls the peasant's plow," is their new refrain. In Chicago Opera Theater's production, which opened Wednesday at the Harris Theater, the peasants move closer and closer to the edge of the stage, defiantly shaking their fists.

The crisp direction that lays that scene out, the clear diction of the chorus and the imaginative conducting of Alexander Platt that accompanies it are a perfect microcosm of the production as a whole. Even without the stars of the show, the forces involved show why the intelligent and plucky company willingly uses the word "opera" as an adjective and not a noun in its name.

Now 20 years old, Nixon in China lives in a world in which roughly a generation and a half of the population has no memory of the Nixon years. What those of us in this group know of Richard Nixon we have gleaned from biographies, from Stephen Ambrose's to those by more muckraking authors, Oliver Stone's film Nixon, or TV documentaries. The picture that emerges from these sources is of a man haunted by his demons and made paranoid by the expectations he held for himself. But what these sources all have in common with each other, but not with Nixon in China, is that they all came after the Watergate scandal. Nixon in China focuses on the man prior to his downfall and disgrace, and thus gives us a man more average than he later appeared. Nixon's Nixon is a man who hadn't yet tumbled from power, a man more like everyone else.

As this Nixon, Robert Orth has the stiff-legged gait and slight stoop down pat. He sings with a robust baritone and admirably communicates Nixon's eagerness to please his Chinese hosts. When he sings on the tarmac just after his arrival that "News has a kind of mystery," he floats that last word and shows both the dreaminess and the hope that it contains.

Maria Kanyova continues to make an impression with her clear soprano and impassioned acting. "This is prophetic," her big Act II aria, soared through the theater and almost every word was understandable, an achievement not met by Carolann Page on the Nonesuch recording.

Lyric Opera Center for American Artists (LOCAA for short) member Kathleen Kim achieved the opera equivalent of sticking a gymnastic dismount as Madame Mao. Adams' tortuous coloratura leaps were sang with verve and ease. (Kanyova is a LOCAA alumna, by the way.)

I heard Mark Duffin sing Peter Grimes in Bloomington a few years ago when IU needed to find a tenor who could handle the title role. His tenor in this role confirmed my thoughts that he still had the power to get out a big sound, but he seems more lyrical as Mao Tse-Tung than I remember his Grimes. Mao's lofty philosophical pronouncements unfold in long waves, which Duffin let roll out.

There's a lot more that could be said, and yes, blogging does give you unlimited space. But this should give you a snapshot view of the show's stars, and the rest of the production is on their same high level. (Except for Chen-Ye Yuan's Chou En-Lai, whose muddy diction ruins some of the most profound moments, including his final speech. But that's relatively minor, and may improve over the run.)

Nixon's still the one, if we take "the one" to mean a bold look at American morals, and what happens when people make history. Alexander Platt's conducting allows all of this to be seen and heard.

(Photo by Steve Kagan. COT general director Brian Dickie has some thoughts on the supertitles failure, which was also brought up in John von Rhein's, Wynne Delacoma's, and Andrew Patner's reviews. Patner's review will be in that space soon.)