With director
Peter Sellars he worked on an opera based on former president
Richard Nixon's trip to the People's Republic of China in February 1972. The
principal figures include Nixon, his wife
Pat Nixon,
Zedong Mao and his
wife,
Lan Ping,
Enlai Zhou, and
Henry Kissinger, not as political cartoons but as
"mythological characters of our time." The world premiere was held on
October 22, 1987. Later, Adams wrote another opera based on the
Palestinian hijacking of the luxury cruise ship Achille Lauro in
October 1985.