When “Nixon in China” had its premiere at Houston Grand Opera on Oct. 22, 1987, there had never been anything quite like it. No previous American opera — perhaps no opera, ever — had so boldly dealt with recent political history. The topic, President Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 trip to China, was still the subject of international conversation 15 years later, and many of its principal characters were still very much alive and contentious.
The opera caused a sensation. John Adams, its composer, and Peter Sellars, its director, went on to become two of the most prominent figures in contemporary music.
But Alice Goodman, who wrote its enigmatic, poetic libretto, seemed to vanish from the scene after her subsequent collaboration with Mr. Adams and Mr. Sellars, the still-controversial “Death of Klinghoffer.” Raised Jewish, she converted to Christianity in 1989 and in 2001 was ordained an Anglican priest in England. Now 59, she serves around 6,000 people in a group of parishes in Cambridgeshire, driving a battered car festooned with flinty, expletive-strewn bumper stickers with mottos like “Doing my part to piss off the religious right.”
More here-
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/arts/music/nixon-china-john-adams-alice-goodman-peter-sellars.html
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