ABSTRACT
The opera provides conflicting perspectives of Chiang Ch'ing, or 'the wife of Chairman Mao' as her spectacular aria puts it, and these contradictory aspects of her character provides brief glimpses of her life-long metamorphosis from a Shanghai actress with a shady reputation to, the second most powerful person in China. John Adams and Alice Goodman depicts her as a serious, stern, and powerful leader and as the vibrant and saucy young communist who first attracted Mao's attention. Adams's use of significant pauses in the melodic line, in conjunction with the libretto, musically depicts Chiang's position of authority. Chiang's lamentations about the diminished role of women in Chinese history continue to project disjunct, triadic arpeggios. Combined with the harmonic structure of the aria and the distinctive shape and pacing of the melodic line, Adams effectively employs Chiang's upper register to provide a strong and powerful musical image of the important character.
