My two favourite operas written by people who are still alive are Akhnaten by Philip Glass and Nixon in China by John Adams. I understand that my tastes are shared by … I nearly said the "general public", but of course the general public despises opera of any sort. My tastes are shared by opera goers.

The effectiveness of Nixon in China is revealing, and what it reveals is very bad news indeed for opera. Why does Nixon in China not seem to be as ridiculous and absurd as most "opera" written in the last fifty years? How come a stage full of overweight weirdos, singing away in that pre-microphonic smash-the-windows style that opera is sung in, which usually looks and sounds idiotic, in Nixon in China, does not look and sound idiotic, but on the contrary seems amazingly appropriate? What gives?

The answer is that the subject matter of Nixon in China is also totally ridiculous. Nixon in China is about one of those gigantically vacuous photo-opportunity yawn-ins that was the Nixon trip to China. Nothing was said of the remotest significance or interest. If saying things had been the object of the exercise, then a few dozen phone-calls could have seen to everything. But of course, the importance of Nixon's trip to China was "symbolic". It was, that is to say, play acting, with political speeches instead of real ones. And what are political speeches, during events such as this one? They are public performances, scripted in advance to the point where actually delivering them seems pointless, consisting of insincere and totally artificial complements and invocations, from which any trace of actual on-the-spot communication has been studiously removed.

Maybe Nixon, when in China, actually did some serious things and communicated some serious ideas. But who among us thinks this, or feels this?

In short, the events depicted in Nixon in China are of precisely the same kind as the events performed on an operatic stage.

This is why it works so very, very well. It seems totally appropriate. The characters are bonkers - bashing or waffling or self-deceiving their way through a totally obsolete and absurd form of communication, so they work perfectly as characters in an opera.

But the "popular" (these things are relative) success of Nixon in China is not good news for opera. It doesn't signify that opera has any sort of future. As soon as undead classical composers try to portray events that are not ridiculous, the form collapses right back into excruciating, toe-curling embarrassment.

Akhnaten I like also, and that's about an ancient Egyptian boy king who presides over an incomprehensible civilisation of infinite weirdness. To be exact, I don't really like Akhnaten as such. But I do like the sound that it makes.

I do watch other operas by the Undead from time to time, on the TV. Always they are ridiculous. Always.

The most recent such absurdity I saw some of was something called The Silver Tassie, which was about soldiers who fought in the First World War. Please. That's a serious, real subject, something we all care about, deeply. If you're going to present something like that on a stage, you can either do it seriously, or do it as an opera. Both is impossible.