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On the 50th anniversary of President Nixon’s historic state visit to Mao's China, theatre director Daniel Kramer explores the politics and drama of ‘the week that changed the world’ through the prism of John Adams’s operatic masterpiece ‘Nixon in China’ - as his own production of the opera gets underway for the Hannover State Opera in its 2023 season.

We’ll hear from the librettist Alice Goodman, composer John Adams and original director and conceiver of the opera Peter Sellars who reflect on the enduring power of ‘Nixon in China’, opening in 1987 and one of the first operas ever written inspired by recent political events, combining incredible music and poetic insight with history and journalism. Drawing on the first-person testimony of reporters who covered the visit and those in the room when Nixon debated with Mao face to face, this deeply musical feature explores the diplomatic context, media spectacle and psychological dimensions of Nixon's state visit and what it illuminates about today's global balance of power.

Presented by Daniel Kramer. With contributions from librettist Alice Goodman, director Peter Sellars, composer John Adams, former US China Ambassador and special assistant to Henry Kissinger Winston Lord, Robert Keatley, who was part of the press corps as foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, director of the China Institute at SOAS Steve Tsang, music critic and author Alex Ross, former CNN bureau chief in Bejing Mike Chinoy, opera singer Julian Chou Lambert, former editor of the London Evening News covering Nixon's visit Stephen Claypole, soprano Janis Kelly who played Pat Nixon at the Met and baritone Mark Stone, who will play Nixon in Daniel's 2023 production of 'Nixon in China'.

Produced by Simon Hollis

A Brook Lapping Production for Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 3

First broadcast in February 2022​