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That was it? That was ''Nixon in China''? Finally, on Thursday evening, we had the world premiere of the most heavily publicized and shrewdly promoted new opera of this decade. Though grandly proportioned, the Houston Grand Opera production turned out to be a Peter Sellars variety show, worth a few giggles but hardly a strong candidate for the standard repertory.

The evening held unusual promise. The voguish and sometimes roguish Mr. Sellars, instead of employing his directorial talents to revise operas by dead composers, was collaborating this time with a living one, John Adams. The libretto, by Alice Goodman, offered moments of wry humor and poignancy, dealing in a mock-mythic style with President Nixon's peacemaking trip to China in 1972. In prospect, the work had suggested parallels with ''The Mother of Us All,'' the Virgil Thomson-Gertrude Stein masterpiece that also fondly reflects a moment in American history as if in a funhouse mirror.

The comparison, however, collapsed quickly. ''Nixon in China'' comes to life, when at all, chiefly through its grab bag of clever scenic effects, such as the descent from the sky over Beijing of the Presidential jet, and by senior-revue jokes at the expense of quasi-historical characters who one might have thought were beyond caricature. Henry Kissinger comes in for fairly harsh ribbing, but a cartoonish Mr. and Mrs. Nixon are objects of mild, campy fun. This Dick and his loyal Pat are innocents abroad, a confused Rotarian couple swept up in incomprehensible events. Miss Goodman's episodic libretto has seriocomic potential, though in performance it was only intermittently understandable despite the composer's reliance on a prosaically chanted recitative style. Despite interesting poetic ambitions, the text remains at heart the material for a good-natured skit, not the political or social satire one might expect.

What comes of it all is a visually striking but coy and insubstantial work. Beneath the lacquered surface there is more lacquer. In spite of chic staging, eye-catching sets and a couple of lively ballet sequences, ''Nixon in China'' works to redefine the concept of boredom. The basic problem, however, must be placed at the feet of Mr. Adams's score. He writes in a mechanical, modular manner that a fairly intelligent computer could be programmed to duplicate. The score jogs along uneventfully for three hours, rousing itself to a proto-tune or a thickly orchestrated fortissimo now and then, but mostly concentrating on making less out of little. Although described by Adams fans as post-Minimal, the score is given to stating a scrap of the most ordinary musical material and ruminating on it in a static style, much as a novice pianist will work on a single chord until neighbors begin to pound the wall. Mr. Adams does for the arpeggio what McDonald's did for the hamburger, grinding out one simple idea unto eternity. At one point, when something musical does threaten to take shape, it turns out to be a quotation from Wagner.

Miss Goodman's purposely oblique libretto is a gentle put-on, a fantasy on the theme of Mr. Nixon's famous trip. Accompanied by loyal wife Pat and diplomatic sidekick Kissinger, he meets Zhou Enlai and Mao. He attends a banquet where many toasts to both countries are drunk. Pat ventures outside and sees some people who are not like us. Dick and Pat attend a performance of ''The Red Detachment of Women'' at the Beijing Opera and somehow become entangled in the violent action, which features a Kissinger look-alike as the villain in a whips-and-chains ballet. The opera tails off into a long, portentous coda in which Dick, Pat, Zhou Enlai, Kissinger, Mao and Madame Mao go to bed in what appears to be a dormitory, capping off the night with meandering soliloquies of enigmatic meaning.

The Houston cast did not transmute fluff into gold, but it performed nobly. The orchestra under John DeMain counted bars accurately, so far as one could tell. James Maddalena suggested the Nixon hunch and flapping arms without actually impersonating Rich Little. Carolann Page, as the pathetically loyal wife, had the First Lady's shy mannerisms down pat, so to say. John Duykers, made up to look like a Mao dummy, had to cope with a vocal line lying a key or two higher than his tenor could smoothly handle. Making a strong vocal impression was not easy in this opera, but Sanford Sylvan as Zhou Enlai displayed a fine, resonant baritone. Trudy Ellen Craney, forced to shout most of the time as Madame Mao, was granted a few moments of bright coloratura in the final scene, and made them tell. Thomas Hammons played Kissinger as a clumsy clod and earned a good share of the evening's laughs. And that, opera fans, was ''Nixon in China.'' The Cast NIXON IN CHINA, opera in two acts by John Adams; libretto by Alice Goodman; directed by Peter Sellars; conducted by John DeMain; sets designed by Adrienne Lobel; costumes designed by Dunya Ramicova. World premiere. Performed by the Houston Grand Opera at the Wortham Theater Center, Houston. Nixon ...... James Maddalena Pat Nixon ...... Carolann Page Zhou Enlai ...... Sanford Sylvan Mao Zedong ...... John Duykers Madame Mao ...... Ellen Craney Henry Kissinger ...... Thomas Hammons Mao's secretaries ...... Mari Opata, Stephanie Friedman, Marion