GOLDEN AGE

Opera has played a central role in John Adams’ growth as an artist, ever since Nixon in China burst onto the scene in 1987, heralding a new era for the art form, full of contemporary vigour and courting its fair share of controversy. As Adams celebrates his 70th birthday this month, Thomas May looks back at the composer’s legacy and offers a glimpse into his new work, The Girls of the Golden West

Adams at 70

John Adams: ‘My themes come largely from my personal engagement with contemporary life’

VERN EVANS

Whether by coincidence or synchronicity, 2017 is a double milestone year for John Adams. He not only turns 70 on 15 February, but also celebrates the 30th anniversary of his birth as an opera composer. Nixon in China was unveiled at Houston Grand Opera in 1987, setting the stage for an operatic career marked by those seemingly inseparable twins, innovation and controversy. Amid what was at the time a moribund scene for new opera in America, this striking debut offered a fresh look at the genre’s potential, paving the way – along with the work of Adams’ older contemporary, Philip Glass – towards a resurgence that has only intensified over the past decade.

The return of Nixon to Houston last month in a more recent production is just one of several opera-related events during this season’s various homages to Adams. In April, the composer himself will conduct a concert performance of Doctor Atomic in London, as part of the Barbican’s Sounds That Changed America series. And, as a grand finale to the birthday celebrations, San Francisco Opera (SFO) in November raises the curtain on one of the most-anticipated premieres of his career: The Girls of the Golden West. Adams’ first commission for SFO since it premiered Doctor Atomic in 2005, Girls draws entirely on period sources to dramatise the circumstances in which the Gold Rush pioneers of the 1850s desperately sought fortune and a new life.

‘It reflects my engagement with being a transplanted West Coast artist and with the history of California,’ Adams told me in a recent interview. The opera’s brutal climax is based on the hanging of a Mexican woman by a violent mob that took place in the Sierra Nevada Mountains just miles from where the composer owns a cabin he has used for decades as a creative retreat. Adams had the idea of linking this tragic story to the separate but contemporaneous narrative of a woman from the East Coast who documented her experiences in a series of detailed letters.