Kathleen Kim (Nixon in China)

I am the wife of Mao Tse-tung

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Metropolitan opera
• Madame Mao

[rscmrcmd]

Kathleen Kim is one of the best singing actresses around. This is a grizzly role for the gentle Kathleen but she nailed it and made it her own. Thanks so much for posting the full aria.

[asx5252]

This is so unbelievable. She totally captures the terrifying and brutal nature of Madame Mao.

[300musicmaster]

question, what is this book?

[flipsyboy]

@Drelnis The Nixons have been taken to the ballet to see one of Mme. Mao's revolutionary works, "The Red Detachment of Women." In the opera, she and the Nixons actually join in the action of the ballet they watch, and Madame Mao changes its plot so it becomes all about her own violent revenge against her enemies via the worst excesses of the Cultural Revolution (which she helped engineer). The Nixons watch in helpless horror as she unleashes bloody chaos.

[Laeliapurpurata]

Hmmm listening to this again I appreciate the difficulty of the tessitura... and I can't help but share in this character's thoughts... the Western world and its freedom, freedom to do stupid things, it's clear that human freedom should be earned... and not really a right, when it is a right, you get people pissed like Madam Mao.

[Laeliapurpurata]

Yes madam... pants for women and no makeup, you go girl.

[johndburt]

@ernestalba This is a brilliant, scary scene. I like your comparison to the Queen of the Night's aria. Who is the man in white, who seems to be one of Lao Szu's cronies, then seems to join the Communists, then hits Ching-hua, then seem to kneel on the floor tearing out his hair?

[zzfinance]

what?why? when you have the book, so you can bully mrs us president?

[ernestalba]

This clip starts when Ching-hua shoots Lao Szu. At the end, the Communist rebel forces are beating up Lao Szu's cronies. All of this is being orchestrated by Madame Mao (Kathleen Kim) and her entourage (three women in gray). Think of it in terms of the Queen of the Night in the Magic Flute and her Three Witches.