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History Is Our Mother: Three Libretti: Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, The Magic Flute
The first appearance of Alice Goodman's two internationally-renowned and controversial libretti, alongside one of her masterful translations.
An NYRB Classics Original
Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer played a crucial role in bringing opera back to life as a contemporary art form, and they have been popular—and, in the case of Klinghoffer , highly controversial—ever since they were first staged by the director Peter Sellars in the eighties and nineties. Both operas were conceived from the start as collaborations between composer and writer, and their power is due as much to the dazzlingly constructed and deeply felt libretti of the poet Alice Goodman as they are to John Adams’s music. Nixon in China is a story, at once heroic, comic, and unnerving, of men and women making history and of their different conceptions of what history is and what it means to makes it. Klinghoffer , by contrast, has at its center the tragedy of an innocent man condemned at the cost of his life to play a part in history. History Is Our Mother , which takes its title from a line sung by the title character in Nixon in China , brings Goodman’s two libretti together for the first time in book form. Included alongside Goodman’s no less inspired translation of Emanuel Schikaneder’s famous libretto to The Magic Flute , these vivid dramas of character and searching meditations on fate are here revealed as among the most original, ambitious, and accomplished poetic achievements of our time.
An NYRB Classics Original
Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer played a crucial role in bringing opera back to life as a contemporary art form, and they have been popular—and, in the case of Klinghoffer , highly controversial—ever since they were first staged by the director Peter Sellars in the eighties and nineties. Both operas were conceived from the start as collaborations between composer and writer, and their power is due as much to the dazzlingly constructed and deeply felt libretti of the poet Alice Goodman as they are to John Adams’s music. Nixon in China is a story, at once heroic, comic, and unnerving, of men and women making history and of their different conceptions of what history is and what it means to makes it. Klinghoffer , by contrast, has at its center the tragedy of an innocent man condemned at the cost of his life to play a part in history. History Is Our Mother , which takes its title from a line sung by the title character in Nixon in China , brings Goodman’s two libretti together for the first time in book form. Included alongside Goodman’s no less inspired translation of Emanuel Schikaneder’s famous libretto to The Magic Flute , these vivid dramas of character and searching meditations on fate are here revealed as among the most original, ambitious, and accomplished poetic achievements of our time.
240 pages, Paperback
First published July 18, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 30, 2021
In my younger days, I was inclined to repeat the old adage, with Auden's libretto for Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress" as primary example, that an opera libretto should not be too good, lest it detract from the music. Goodman's poetry shows the sophistry and callowness of that sentiment. These libretti are quite good enough to be read on their own, but of course you will want to hear them in the context of their musical settings to have the full impact. The introduction by James Williams is also dazzling for its breadth of reference the cogency of its analysis.
November 27, 2017
The three libretti are quite good but I think they will gain a lot more in performance. Goodman's poetry is pretty good but she does have moments where she makes marginal choices in theme and language. NIC is the weekest and Klinghoffer is the strongest of the plays. I think I will venture into Klinghoffer Performance first.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews