Nixon in China

Next to the landing on the moon, it was Richard Nixon’s meeting with Mao Tse tung in China that was then regarded as the biggest media event: For one week during prime time, Nixon had his daily appearance on television. He described China as »Terra incognita« – just like the moon. John Adam’s »heroic opera« shows the construction of modern myths with archetypical situations and characters. It evolves all about the power of images, about the contradiction between apparently objective reality and subjective perception. And it is about the question in whom we still believe that we can trust.