The most critically divisive pieces in Adams's collection are his historical operas. At first release, "Nixon in China" received mostly negative press feedback. Donal Henahan, writing in "The New York Times", called the Houston Grand Opera world premiere of the work "worth a few giggles but hardly a strong candidate for the standard repertory" and "visually striking but coy and insubstantial". James Wierzbicki for the "St. Louis Post-Dispatch" described Adams's score as the weak point in an otherwise well-staged performance, noting the music as "inappropriately placid", "cliché-ridden in the abstract" and "heavily in Adams's worn-out Minimalist clichés". With time, however, the opera has come to be revered as a great and influential production. Robert Hugill for "Music and Vision" called the production "astonishing ... nearly twenty years after its premier", while The Guardian's Fiona Maddocks praised the score's "diverse and subtle palette" and Adams' "rhythmic ingenuity".