{"product_id":"9781681370651","title":"History is Our Mother: Three Libretti: Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, The Magic Flute","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe first appearance of Alice Goodman's two  internationally-renowned and controversial libretti, alongside one of  her masterful translations.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn NYRB Classics Original\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eNixon in China\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Death of Klinghoffer\u003c\/i\u003e played a crucial role in bringing opera back to life as a contemporary   art form, and they have been popular—and, in the case of \u003ci\u003eKlinghoffer\u003c\/i\u003e,   highly controversial—ever since they were first staged by the director   Peter Sellars in the eighties and nineties. Both operas were conceived   from the start as collaborations between composer and writer, and  their  power is due as much to the dazzlingly constructed and deeply  felt  libretti of the poet Alice Goodman as they are to John Adams’s  music. \u003ci\u003eNixon in China\u003c\/i\u003e is a story, at once heroic, comic, and  unnerving, of men and women  making history and of their different  conceptions of what history is and  what it means to makes it. \u003ci\u003eKlinghoffer\u003c\/i\u003e, by contrast, has at its center the tragedy of an innocent man condemned at the cost of his life to play a part in history. \u003ci\u003eHistory Is Our Mother\u003c\/i\u003e, which takes its title from a line sung by the title character in \u003ci\u003eNixon in China\u003c\/i\u003e,   brings Goodman’s two libretti together for the first time in book  form.  Included alongside Goodman’s no less inspired translation of Emanuel Schikaneder’s famous libretto to \u003ci\u003eThe Magic Flute\u003c\/i\u003e, these  vivid dramas  of character and searching meditations on fate are here  revealed as  among the most original, ambitious, and accomplished poetic  achievements  of our time.","brand":"New York Review Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47157624439024,"sku":"9781681370651","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781681370651_p0.jpg?v=1763692499","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781681370651","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}