Nixon in China is an English-language opera by American composer John Adams with a libretto by Alice Goodman. The opera is generally considered to be Adams' greatest piece of work as well as one of the greatest operas of the late 20th Century. Nixon in China premiered in 1987 to middling reviews, and it wouldn't be until its later productions that critics and audiences would begin seeing the value of Adams' minimalist work. The opera details the famous meeting between Chinese Communist Chairman Mao Zedong and American president Richard Nixon, covering most of what had been covered journalistically in operatic format. Many have seen Adams' work, along with many other contemporary operas as falling under the somewhat deprecatory genre category of "CNN Opera," or opera that uses contemporary news as its subject matter or where contemporary settings are applied to classical operas.
