Nixon Noted

Garry Trudeau on a food line?

Peter Sellars, whose name always seems to follow the phrase "enfant terrible," turned Nanki-Poo into a rock star in his version of The Mikado and set Handel's Orlando on Mars. Last month, at the Houston Grand Opera, and this month, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the brilliant director takes Richard Nixon to China. It all began when Sellars read Kissinger's memoirs about the famous 1972 trip. Alice Goodman's libretto for Sellars's Nixon in China has the secretary of state appearing as a villainous overlord, Pat Nixon visiting a pig farm, and Mao mouthing his maxims to the rhythms of Motown and dancing a postmodern fox-trot with Mme. Mao. John Adams, whose minimalist music studiously flirts with kitsch, says his score "has pretty much everything, including overripe Glenn Miller. " This is surely the avant-garde event of the season.

EDWARD ROTHSTEIN