John Coolidge Adams is an American composer of classical music and opera whose first opera was inspired by U.S. President Richard Nixon's visit to China in what year?
Nixon in China Nixon in China is an opera in three acts by John Adams, with a libretto by Alice Goodman. Adams' first opera, it was inspired by U.S. President Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972. The work premiered at the Houston Grand Opera on October 22, 1987, in a production by Peter Sellars with choreography by Mark Morris. When Sellars approached Adams with the idea for the opera in 1985, Adams was initially reluctant, but eventually decided that the work could be a study in how myths come to be, and accepted the project. Goodman's libretto was the result of considerable research into Nixon's visit, though she disregarded most sources published after the 1972 trip.
National Assembly Building (Beijing) The National Assembly Building is the first purpose-built meeting place of the National Assembly (國民大會, Guómín Dàhuì) of the Republic of China in Beijing. It was designed by Curt Rothkegel (1876-1946), a German architect based in Qingdao. Rothkegel had made earlier (and grander) designs for a Parliament Building commissioned by the late Qing Dynasty, whose construction was started in 1910 on the site of today's Beijing International Hotel on East Chang'an Avenue, but was left unfinished at the time of the Xinhai Revolution in 1911. The building was used intermittently for sessions of the National Assembly during its troubled history from the aftermath of China's first national election to the Beijing Coup in October 1924.