Although sometimes described as minimalist, the score displays a variety of musical styles, embracing minimalism after the manner of Philip Glass alongside passages echoing 19th-century composers such as Wagner and Johann Strauss.

After he became president in 1969, Nixon saw advantages in improving relations with China and the Soviet Union; he hoped that détente would put pressure on the North Vietnamese to end the Vietnam War, and he might be able to manipulate the two main communist powers to the benefit of the United States.

[1] Nixon laid the groundwork for his overture to China even before he became president, writing in Foreign Affairs a year before his election: "There is no place on this small planet for a billion of its potentially most able people to live in angry isolation.

[1] Chinese premier Zhou Enlai stated that the handshake he and Nixon had shared on the airport tarmac at the beginning of the visit was "over the vastest distance in the world, 25 years of no communication".

[6] Sellars invited Alice Goodman to join the project as librettist,[5] and the three met at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. in 1985 to begin intensive study of the six characters, three American and three Chinese, upon whom the opera would focus.

[3] Mao's wife, on the other hand, was to be "not just a shrieking coloratura, but also someone who in the opera's final act can reveal her private fantasies, her erotic desires, and even a certain tragic awareness.

[9] The director encouraged Adams and Goodman to make other allusions to classical operatic forms; thus the expectant chorus that begins the work, the heroic aria for Nixon following his entrance, and the dueling toasts in the final scene of Act 1.

Nevertheless, musicologist Timothy Johnson, in his 2011 book about Nixon in China, noted "the result of the collaboration betrays none of these disagreements among its creators who successfully blended their differing points of view into a very satisfyingly cohesive whole".

In the evening the presidential party, as guests of Mao's wife Chiang Ch'ing, attends the Peking Opera for a performance of a political ballet-opera The Red Detachment of Women.

As the stage action ends, Chiang Ch'ing, angry at the apparent misinterpretation of the piece's message, sings a harsh aria ("I am the wife of Mao Tse-tung"), praising the Cultural Revolution and glorifying her own part in it.

[16] The audience's general reaction was expressed by what the Los Angeles Times termed "polite applause", the descent of the Spirit of '76 being the occasion for clapping from both the onstage chorus and from the viewers in the opera house.

Chou En-lai's toast, addressed by baritone Sanford Sylvan directly to the audience, brought what pianist and writer William R. Braun called "a shocked hush of chastened admiration".

This "musically and visually dazzling reimagining of the piece" [33] included Super 8mm home movies of the visit to China (shot by H. R. Haldeman, Dwight Chapin, and others) projected onto a giant screen with the appearance of a 1960s television set.

[8] Martin Bernheimer, writing in the Los Angeles Times, drew attention to the choreography of Morris ("the trendy enfant terrible of modern dance") in the Act 2 ballet sequences.

"[40] When the work was finally performed in London, 13 years after its Houston premiere and after a long period of theatrical neglect, Tempo's critic Robert Stein responded to ENO's 2000 production enthusiastically.

He particularly praised the performance of Maddalena, and concluded that "Adams's triumph ... consists really in taking a plot chock-full of talk and public gesture, and through musical characterisation ... making a satisfying and engaging piece.

"[26] Of the ENO revival in 2006, Erica Jeal of The Guardian wrote that "from its early visual coup with the arrival of the plane, Sellars' production is an all-too-welcome reminder of his best form".

[28] Tommasini also praised the performance of Robert Brubaker in the role of Mao, "captur[ing] the chairman's authoritarian defiance and rapacious self-indulgence", and found the Scottish soprano Janis Kelly "wonderful" as Pat Nixon.

Adams had been inspired, in developing his art, by minimalist composers such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley, and this is reflected in the work by repetitive rhythmic patterns.

[46] As Glass's techniques did not allow Adams to accomplish what he wanted, he employed a system of constantly shifting metric organizational schemes to supplement the repeated rhythms in the opera.

This, writes Tommasini, creates "a hypnotic, quietly intense backdrop, pierced by fractured, brassy chords like some cosmic chorale", in a manner reminiscent of Philip Glass.

[28] Tommasini contrasts this with the arrival of Nixon and his entourage, when the orchestra erupts with "big band bursts, rockish riffs and shards of fanfares: a heavy din of momentous pomp".

[28] Gramophone's critic compares the sharply written exchanges between Nixon, Mao and Chou En-lai with the seemingly aimless wandering of the melodic lines in the more reflective sections of the work, concluding that the music best serves the libretto in passages of rapid dialogue.

[28][48] The differences in perspective between East and West are set forth early in the first act, and underscored musically: while the Chinese of the chorus see the countryside as fields ready for harvest, the fruits of their labor and full of potential, the Nixons describe what they saw from the windows of the Spirit of '76 as a barren landscape.

This gap is reflected in the music: the chorus for the workers is marked by what Johnson terms "a wide-ranging palette of harmonic colors", the Western perspective is shown by the "quick, descending, dismissive cadential gesture" which follows Nixon's description of his travels.

The main focus of the act, however, is the Chinese revolutionary opera-ballet, The Red Detachment of Women, "a riot of clashing styles" according to Tommasini, reminiscent of agitprop theatre with added elements of Strauss waltzes, blasts of jazz and 1930s Stravinsky.

[55][b] Critic Robert Stein identifies Adams's particular strengths in his orchestral writing as "motoring, brassy figures and sweetly reflective string and woodwind harmonies",[26] a view echoed by Gregory Carpenter in the liner notes to the 2009 Naxos recording of the opera.

Carpenter pinpoints Adams's "uncanny talent for recognising the dramatic possibilities of continually repeating melodies, harmonies and rhythms", and his ability to change the mix of these elements to reflect the onstage action.

[60] However, Robert Hugill, reviewing the 2006 English National Opera revival, found that the sometimes tedious "endless arpeggios" are often followed by gripping music which immediately re-engages the listener's interest.

Gramophone's Good DVD Guide praised the singing, noting James Maddalena's "aptly volatile Nixon" and Trudy Ellen Craney's admirable delivery of Chiang Ch'ing's coloratura passages.