A delightful moment in Adams

Opera rarely summons up a grin quite like the one I had on my face at this moment (4.20 in the clip).
And here's the scene I mentioned yesterday, where Pat Nixon comes into her own:

I'm finding that Nixon in China has an unexpected capacity to resonate with things I'm thinking about (mass communication, the nature of civic art, tyranny and self-absorption in Seneca's Thyestes) as well as the quotidian practices of life (planning trips, choosing clothes to wear, interacting with people of different ethnicities, running meetings, dealing with the unpredictable and irrational behaviors encouraged by certain types of institutional hierarchy).