Michael Mayes

Written by Dame Ethel Smyth, English composer and leader in the women’s suffrage movement, The Wreckers was first performed in Germany in 1906 and was mounted in the composer’s homeland in 1909. This powerful three-act opera about piracy, love, and betrayal in a community of religious fanatics received its U.S. premiere in 2015 at Bard SummerScape in a penetrating production directed by Thaddeus Strassberger, with the American Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Leon Botstein.

Besides the landing on the moon by the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, Richard Nixon’s meeting with China’s leader Mao Zedong in February 1972 then represented one of the biggest media spectacles in history. Nixon himself established the reference between the two events: “We came in peace for all mankind” not only marked the lunar module Eagle’s landing spot – Nixon also spoke of it into the microphones just before his departure to China. It was not John Adam’s aim to create a superficial or even a caricaturing representation of Nixon’s visit when composing his opera. He attempted to create a “heroic opera” about the construction of modern myths by using archetypical characters and situations. Director Marco Štorman stages Adams’ minimal music opera as a deconstruction review about the power of images, the politics of staging and the staging of politics.