Rain is hardly a deterrent in Paris. It’s opening night for a new staging of the John Adams warhorse “Nixon in China,” and the imposing stone walls of the Opéra Bastille are framed by a quickly-brewing storm. Under trickling March skies, the house bears an uncanny resemblance to the military stronghold from which it gets its name, with an austere shadow that throws the square below into a gloomy semi-darkness. But down on the street, the entryway is awash in color. From casual to haute-couture, throngs of ticket holders are chattering amiably and waving with happy shouts of recognition through the drizzle: The city is squeezing in one last cigarette before the curtain. This unphased ambivalence to the darkening skies reads like a classic scene of old Parisian theater-going, stubbornly insistent on the right to cultural experiences come hell or high water or a heavy spring rain. But this time, there’s a catch: not a grey hair in sight. The opening of “Nixon” has been billed as an exclusive Under-30’s experience, a new marketing tactic that has worked wonders for the box office (at ten euros a piece the tickets routinely sell out). This is the opera’s first trip to Paris, and for all the critical anxiety that the American humor of Alice Goodman’s libretto would fall flat on French audiences, the room is electric, hollering its approval for Gustavo Dudamel and his orchestra at the top of the second act and bubbling with laughter at the sight of a 20-foot Chinese dragon playing hide-and-seek with Renée Fleming. Paris has proved once again that young audiences can and will turn out in droves for contemporary opera—even foreign-language operas written before they were born—if given the opportunity to do so. Tonight is as gleeful as first nights come, and the exchange of opinions pouring back into the damp, smoke-filled street at 11:30 is unmistakably warm.
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