Saturday, April 11, 2026
8:00 PM
Opera luminaries Thomas Hampson and Renée Fleming perform three scenes from John Adams’ groundbreaking Nixon in China with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. Inspired by Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China, Nixon in China is considered one of the most consequential operas in American history. After, Andris Nelsons leads the Boston Symphony in Antonín Dvořák's New World Symphony, which was composed when Dvořák's was living in the U.S. Bursting with sweeping melodies, Dvořák's Ninth Symphony blends Bohemian soul with the spirit of America.
Andris Nelsons, conductor
Renée Fleming, soprano
Thomas Hampson, baritone
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
Lisa Wong, guest choral conductor
John ADAMS Three Scenes from Nixon in China
Antonín DVOŘÁK Symphony No. 9, From the New World
This concert was recorded on March 28, 2026 at Symphony Hall.
Learn more about the Boston Symphony Orchestra's 2025-2026 season on their site.
In an interview with CRB's Brian McCreath, Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson describe the brilliant marriage of words and music in Nixon in China, portraying Pat and Richard Nixon as operatic characters, both in these concert scenes and in full productions of the opera they've sung together, and the particular technical challenges of singing these roles.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT (lightly edited for clarity):
Brian McCreath We know Pat and Richard Nixon as these historical figures, and many of us listening will have some sense of them as these figures, because we literally were there during their lives, but tell me who the Pat and Richard Nixon are that we hear, especially in this particular concert version of Nixon in China, Renée?
Renée Fleming Well, in the concert version, you can't really say who they are, because there's too little to grasp. But in the opera, it's interesting because there are certain elements that are taken right out of the actual visit. You know, her engagement with the public, that's all of Act 2. So, people will remember that, that she was really the face of the trip. And I think otherwise, there's a lot that really is quite out there. The whole third act was a bit of a dream, so it really depends on your point of view. I was able to do a ton of research because I know people who are directly involved in the archive. I had long talks with a gentleman who worked for them, alongside so many great journalists. And so, I learned a lot about their marriage, about who she would have been speaking with on this trip. It was really quite interesting. We never get to play real people.
Brian McCreath Well, I want to come back to that, but Thomas, first tell me about your impression of who Richard Nixon is in this opera.
Thomas Hampson Probably the most fundamental thing for everybody is this is Richard Nixon pre-Watergate. Watergate's coming, but this is pretty much the zenith of Kissinger and Nixon's world politic. The opera is not a bio of Nixon or a bio of Mao, it's a conversation or an illumination of politics becoming narrative, being institutionalized, even mythologized. And I think that's where the third act becomes very important because they are just normal people that have been these iconic representatives of clashing ideals. And they spend the whole third act remembering the essence of their lives 35 years earlier. So I think it's quite a genius construction of John [Adams] and Alice Goodman. It's quite something, but this Nixon that you hear, we get a lot of his characteristics, a lot his personality, his paranoia shows up. His hubris shows up. But I think that his preoccupation with winning the historical narrative, that's where it feels this is all coming from.
Brian McCreath Renée, you just mentioned that it's so unusual to play someone who is an actual person, and I thought about that, that your careers, your entire artistic lives, were mostly built around fictional characters made up out of, you know, someone's mind. Tell me what that means for you.
Renée Fleming Even if they were historical, we don't know very much about them, but you try to work with period costumes and wigs as best you can, and so that's a lot of the career right there. But so much of it is fiction, and so, this was really refreshing, mainly because there's so much footage of them and footage of them on this trip. It was really the first major world event that was captured on television. And it's exciting to kind of see how that and folded. And what was interesting for Pat Nixon is that, as I said, she was the public face of the trip while Richard Nixon and Kissinger were in meetings the whole time. So, it gave her an opportunity to become known. The red coat was iconic, and we just finished a production of this, which kind of played on a lot of those things.
Thomas Hampson I have to tell you, the first time Renée came out in full makeup, wig and red coat, I gasped because it was like Pat had just come around the corner. We did what we could with my hair and a wig and all that, and we both were conscious to give some physical characteristics that we all know of Nixon. Nixon tended to point his fingers a lot and babble a lot. But we didn't, I don't think, want to make it histrionic and cliché. But it has been fun to study these very intricate and complex personalities.
Brian McCreath And I think historically, if I might be so bold, Pat is a little bit more of a sympathetic figure in our memories than maybe Richard is. And I wonder if you found yourself maybe finding things to relate to in Pat Nixon's life or in her personality that maybe you hadn't touched on before in your previous experience of her as a historical character.
Renée Fleming Well, I didn't really know anything about her. So, it was fun to kind of uncover how poor she was growing up, how much she had to take care of her siblings because her mother died when she was very young. So, she had a tough, tough childhood. And then, he did not seem to be a prize to her. She had her sights set on other things, I think, but he was really adamant about marrying her and pursuing her and then he became president. So, she actually did very well to be first lady, but it all came crashing down. And, you know, one feels very badly for her. She was very angry at him because she didn't know anything about Watergate. She was blindsided. So, yeah, so [that was] post-Nixon in China.
Thomas Hampson They both came from pretty what we would call today simple backgrounds. And Pat was a was a teacher. I have a bit of trivia for everybody. Her actual name was not Pat.
Brian McCreath Oh, my gosh. What was it?
Thomas Hampson Thelma.
Brian McCreath Really?
Thomas Hampson She was born Thelma and stayed Thelma. Her father was a, how do we call it? "Islanderphile," an "Irishophile" and loved everything Irish and loved his Irish heritage and nicknamed her Patty or Pat. And that just stuck with her her whole life and she kept it.
Brian McCreath That's fascinating.
Renée Fleming It's better than Thelma. [laughs]
Thomas Hampson Probably better than Thelma. [laughs]
Renée Fleming She made the right choice.
Thomas Hampson But I've always called Renée Thelma, just to get her attention.
Renée Fleming Yes, yes.
Brian McCreath Codenames, right?
Thomas Hampson But I think she was... I think a wonderful point you made, Renée: Pat was not part of the political process, as a lot of first wives aren't. I mean, I don't think we know anything about Eisenhower's wife, Mamie, other than she was a wonderful grandmother. But Pat Nixon, after Jackie Kennedy, was really a representative of iconic American ideals of womanhood at that time. And I think Richard was glad to have that buffer because he and Kissinger were trying to reconstruct the world. And that shows up in part of this extraordinary libretto. We can't, both of us, probably say enough about [librettist] Alice Goodman. But also John [Adams]. I mean, they have created a wonderful document that I think will stand the time in that, the farther we get away from the actual event or even the actual person, the iconic questions of politics, history, mythologizing legacy will remain intact in this piece. It was quite remarkable for us, given the contemporary political atmosphere, and let's just leave it at that, here and there [Paris]. It was a completely different reading of our public, we felt, than in '23, when we did the original production. People took it seriously on a completely different level. They went to the essence of the piece and were not caught up in any kind of "rah-rah America" or, "well, let's not leave China behind." It was just completely objective to the issues at hand. And I think that says a lot for John and Alice.
Renée Fleming But I think, honestly, for me, the score is really what's magical about this piece. The incredible orchestration, the use of orchestra, the vocal writing, and the use of rhythm really to, within the orchestration and the vocal writing, to kind of delineate the storyline. And I was sorry that he never wrote anything quite like this after that. I wish he had.
Brian McCreath Tell me more about that because he has written a lot of operas. What is it about Nixon in China that's different from what he's written since then?
Renée Fleming It's absolutely the complexity of the score. It's super complex and consistently from the beginning. But I really think the orchestration is just incredible.
Thomas Hampson I do hear, I don't know the score, but I have heard people say that [The Death of] Klinghoffer has a lot of these attributes. But Klinghoffer didn't have nearly, and won't have nearly the life on stage that Nixon will for various and obvious reasons. You know, he did write in this period an extraordinary piece called The Wound Dresser on texts by Walt Whitman, a monologue for baritone, which I've sung often. It's part and parcel to this period of his life, and it is a magnificent piece, but I agree with you. There isn't another ... I'm not trying to be an armchair critic here.
Renée Fleming I love them all. I'm a fan.
Thomas Hampson But Nixon really is kind of a standalone masterpiece.
Renée Fleming But everybody talks about it now as a masterpiece, an American masterpiece. And Klinghoffer, for me... I was there at the premiere, and I felt that it was just so declamatory. There was just much text that had to be spewed out. This was more prosaic, I would say, than Nixon.
Brian McCreath Interesting because, I'll share with you that John, literally today, dropped a podcast episode with Manny Ax. I don't know if you know that Manny's doing a new podcast. But John is his guest on an episode that just dropped today and I was listening to it. And I want to run by you a little quote that John has in this when he's talking about setting words to music. And he says, "I need really great words to set. I think, Alice Goodman's libretti for Nixon in China and Death of Klinghoffer are among the best libretti of our time." He says, "When I'm hearing text, I'm hearing in my head the rhythm of the words. And it's very much an American rhythm." Is that something that you can sort of hear in what you're...?
Renée Fleming Yeah, absolutely.
Thomas Hampson Totally. You know, as complicated as the rhythms are, a lot of my stuff is really... It takes a while to get in your head, but they follow absolutely geniusly the rhythmic pattern of the expression and of the words. It's really quite remarkable.
Renée Fleming I would say more the rhythm of the words, because pitches can be all over the place. So, he's not following the kind of speech pitch spectrum, I would say, but definitely the rhythm.
Brian McCreath What is it that he asks, though, in the pitch part of what you have to do? The rhythm is, yeah, as you described, it's following the words. It's energized by the words, but what is it in Nixon in China that he asked of you, Renée, that no other composer asks of you in an opera?
Renée Fleming Well, I wouldn't normally throughout my career have sung this role because it's so high. It's very, very high, and what makes it possible, the only thing that makes it possible for me, is there's a little separation between every phrase. And so, that allows my larynx to kind of relax again and gets me through it, you know, plus a lot of experience and a lot understanding of how to sing in the passaggio. So, it's really tough and yet, it's rangey, there's low singing as well, and she's a mature woman at this point. She's not an ingenue, a young girl. And so, it just really works fabulously.
Brian McCreath And so this is part of your satisfaction, what you feel when you leave the stage. Your satisfaction is having conquered those kinds of challenges, but also inhabiting this role.
Renée Fleming Well, and I just love listening to the score. I mean just sitting on stage and listening to Tom's arias and hearing the orchestration in between, the way he uses percussion, for instance. I've never heard that in anything. It's so unique, the polyrhythms, the constantly bouncing back and forth. And it's remarkable that this one single percussionist is playing all of these parts here, because I'm sure in the pit there were more. It sounded like there were four or five. So, I love it, and I love the writing for Tom. I mean the writing for Nixon is also really interesting. The "News" aria is so engaging. So, it's a pleasure to be on the stage listening to this.
Brian McCreath When you hear Renée describe what John asks of Pat Nixon, do you feel more or less that he's asking the same kinds of things of Richard Nixon? Or are there other challenges? Is John writing the words and the lines that you have to sing in a different way from the way he writes for Pat?
Thomas Hampson Well, certainly he writes it in a very much different way. And the duet is also different. You get a different Richard Nixon in the duets with Pat. We become very lyrical and very beautiful and melodic with one another, which brings me back to what she was saying about the "News" aria or my arias in general. You know, Nixon tended to talk at people. He tended to have an idea, as smart as he was, and sort of drill. And that's kind of the genius of the scene we're not doing. The second scene of the first act is this huge scene with Mao and Nixon and Kissinger and Chou En-lai and all this. And they don't really talk to one another, they talk at one another. And they sort of position themselves and try things out, and then Nixon tries to be clever, and Mao just looks at him and said, it's a paradox, you can't forget, and he's kind of embarrassing, and Kissinger's rolling his eyes a lot. I mean, it's a wonderful scene.
Renée Fleming It's a brilliant scene.
Thomas Hampson But whenever I have something to say, It's a pretty direct, thought-out expression of what Nixon thought the world should be like. And, the role is also high. It's a high baritone, it's not a lyric baritones, I guess what we call in German the Kavalier baritone. It's a bit on the Helden side at times. In the third act, I was walking around with Renée saying, well, that's the 37th high G. I'm just about done. [laughs] But it's very expressive. And he works in tonal pockets, really. It's very tonal music, rhythmically challenging and polytonalities, as she said. But you know, everything is working pretty much in thought-out pockets of tonality, which you just work through and figure it out. But now that I'm so confident in the role, I'm quite overwhelmed by how perfectly set the language is. It's just extraordinary.
Brian McCreath Well, one final question, which is that you've made clear you've sung this full production. You did it in 2023, and then it's been revived in Paris, and you're doing it more in other places. But for this, only these few selections from the opera, tell me about your sense of satisfaction as a performer with this little part of Nixon in China. Do you feel the same sense of having given everything in this kind of a setting as opposed to the full opera Renée?
Renée Fleming No, in a word. You can't compare it.
Brian McCreath Okay, that's fair.
Renée Fleming Yeah, in the full opera I get time. First of all, the aria that has been put into this short program is part of a long scene with many little ariettes that really explores who she is, how she's interacting with Madame Mao and with the other people who are there. So it's completely different.
Brian McCreath OK.
Thomas Hampson Actually, in more philosophical lines, where you get Pat thinking about things. No, I don't want to take any experience of this concert away from anybody.
Brian McCreath Of course not.
Thomas Hampson I think the more the score can be heard and marveled at, the better, but it's not it.
Brian McCreath Understood. Understood, but in a way...
Thomas Hampson I hope that some other American opera houses decide that they would like to do a new production.
Brian McCreath Well, exactly.
Thomas Hampson I'm extraordinarily excited to work with another producer. I mean, when we do this in the fall at WNO, it's a new production, new producer. I'm really curious about another producer's take on this piece. It's gonna be a lot of fun.
Brian McCreath And so aside from hearing the Boston Symphony with Andris doing this...
Thomas Hampson Well, there's that.
Brian McCreath ...which will be wonderful in and of itself, this perhaps is a great way to ask people to, say, consider a trip down to Washington to hear when you do this.
Thomas Hampson I can tell you that we're sitting here in the middle of this fantastic orchestra, and Andris loves the piece clearly, and they're playing it like crazy. But we are sitting and hearing things that we probably have maybe heard in an Italienne, you know, an orchestra rehearsal. But on stage, you don't hear these multi-layers and conversations within the instrumentation. And it's really quite exciting.
Renée Fleming And I would also say that all of the other, the older, original productions, many of them can be found on the internet, and I watched as many as I could. And they were perhaps, I would say, too authentic in terms of what was being presented in the text, because then it starts to feel really slow. Like, it really was a dinner, you know? Whereas the thing I loved about the production we just did with Valentina Carrasco, the director who came from La Fura dels Baus, so this avant-garde training, but she managed to get all of the serious parts and the real parts in it, but then also, for instance, the end of the first act, the entire chorus was having a huge ping pong ball war, just throwing them across at each other. And we had another dance where Mao himself was wearing red toe shoes and actually getting on the toe shoes. So she was able to have fun with it, too, which I think was enormously helpful to the audience, because it's long, it's intense, and it's challenging for the audience.
Brian McCreath Wow, I could talk to you both about this all day long, but for now we'll leave it there. So, Renée and Thomas, thank you so much. This is really wonderful. I'm so glad you're here in Boston to do this.
Renée Fleming We could talk to you all day long, great job. [laughs]
Brian McCreath [laughs] That's very kind of you.
Renée Fleming Thank you.
Thomas Hampson Thank you.