In 2011, Sellars directed a production of John Adams's opera "Nixon in China" for New York's Metropolitan Opera. This was broadcast in many theaters around the world in HD on February 12. During a backstage interview in the first intermission, Sellars referred to the fall of President Hosni Mubarak which took place in Cairo on the previous day, comparing it to the momentous time when Richard Nixon first met with Mao Tse-tung in Peking, opening diplomatic and trade relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China. Summer 2011 he directed the opera Griselda (Vivaldi) at the Santa Fe Opera in Santa Fe, New Mexico.