Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - Theses

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    Behind the Photograph: The Portrayal of Chinese and Feminine Elements as Others in 'Nixon in China'
    Owens, Alex M. ( 2022)
    John Adams and his frequent collaborator Peter Sellars share a growing body of stage works that platform and tell American stories. Their first and most well-known opera, Nixon in China, created with librettist Alice Goodman and premiered in 1986, mythologises the events of the U.S. President Richard Nixon’s 1972 diplomatic trip to China. Working against the backdrop of a long history of antagonistic portrayals of foreign and feminine characteristics in operatic works, does this modern work avoid casting non-American and non-masculine characters as symbolic ‘others’ in a measured portrayal of historical events? Through analysing sections of the score and available recordings of the opera, and discussing interviews given by the creative team over the last thirty years, this thesis seeks to understand the biases inherent to the construction of character in this opera’s second act. Focus will be given to the ballet scene, a parodied fragment of The Red Detachment of Women, and the arias of the two lead female roles Madame Mao and Pat Nixon. This all-American creative team, though aware of the history and difficulties in portraying foreign and feminine elements in operatic works, continue to be constrained by their nationalistic viewpoints and masculine focus. This is due to the limited use and availability of source materials outside of those used to conceptualise masculine characters, and the ethnocentric bias of the creative team which resultantly casts both Chinese and feminine elements as Others. This thesis connects to a growing field of intersectional study on issues in operatic construction both in works created recently and across the history of opera.