We have been fans of John Storgårds, who recently concluded his tenure as Chief Conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic, since his debut with the National Symphony Orchestra in 2011. The Finnish conductor's debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, heard on Saturday night in the Music Center at Strathmore, was less auspicious. The fault was not with the conducting, which was incendiary in a house-crushing performance of Holst's The Planets, but with the programming, which opened with Tan Dun's pedestrian Water Concerto.
When the Chinese composer hit the big time, winning the Grawemeyer Award in 1998 for his opera Marco Polo, his use of Chinese instruments in works for European orchestra was revolutionary. Over the last twenty years, though, he has not had a great track record, often recycling similar ideas over and over. Christopher Lamb, principal percussionist of the New York Philharmonic, worked with the composer to create the range of water-based percussion used in the Water Concerto, premiered in 1998. Lamb returned to play it this week over a decade since his last BSO appearance, in 2003, when he also played -- you guessed it -- Tan Dun's Water Concerto. Lamb, assisted by two percussionists, bowed and splashed their way through the piece, using waterphones and a range of other objects splashed and submerged in big plastic bowls of water. (For long stretches, it was maddeningly repetitive, making me think of the gross Robot Chicken skit embedded below.) The woodwinds made duck calls with their mouthpieces, there was an erhu-like solo for the principal cellist, and largely heterophonic writing brought little of interest in harmony or orchestration. The effect could be achieved much more inexpensively with a small ensemble, rather than using up a symphony orchestra's time.
The string of world premieres, commissioned by the BSO for its 100th anniversary season, continued with a new piece by Libby Larsen, Earth (Holst Trope). It was created to fill a misunderstood lacuna in Holst's The Planets, which is not about the planets as heavenly bodies, but about their influence on humanity through astrology, meaning that Earth is not really germane (nor is Pluto for that matter). A Space Age vocabulary of sounds in a triple-meter pulsating texture was pleasant enough, until Larsen wove a cantus firmus into the piece, the hymn tune usually sung to the words "For the Beauty of the Earth." It was a gesture that unfortunately recalled P.D.Q. Bach's use of the tune Jesus Loves Me, This I Know in Iphigenia in Brooklyn.
The last time that we heard the BSO play The Planets, in 2008, there was a similar confusion about the piece. Unlike Alsop's interpretation back then, Storgårds clearly saw his targets and helped the orchestra hit all of them: the col legno strikes in the strings and apocalyptic brass in the death march of Mars, but with plenty of quiet space in the Mercury movement for the delicate solos of celesta, piccolo, English horn bass oboe, and others. Holst's piece is a manual on devastating orchestration, imitated for decades by John Williams and other film composers, and the comparison to the Tan Dun Water Concerto on the same program was damning.
Manuel de Falla’s Danza Ritual de Fuego, exceedingly well played by the Munich Philharmonic under the baton of Tan Dun (April 2nd – 4th), is a charming little fire cracker from this composer who nearly wrote himself into one-hit-wonder status with that work.
Before the Spaniard was on the program, it was Bartók’s turn. Simplistically speaking, you trade in melody for compelling rhythm with the Hungarian master—and, assuming you are receptive to that, you feel enriched by it. That’s true for most of his major orchestral pieces, although in the Dance Suite for Orchestra Sz.77 the equation doesn’t work out for me. The moments of lyricism amid a hectic, craggy landscape of various ethically flavored dance rhythms, with brief, disoriented outbursts, strikes me as more random than well integrated. Barring greater exposure to the work, it can easily make the impression of bits and pieces plugged from the scores of several movies, filmed on original locations.
Tan Dun’s own music, incidentally, makes a not dissimilar impression. The Pipa Concerto—for that Chinese zither that looks half like a lute and sounded like a metallic banjo whenever pipa virtuoso Shao Rong strummed the amplified instrument vigorously—is heavily based on his 1999 “Ghost Opera” for String Quartet and Pipa (which remains my favorite Tan Dun work). But the mix of western orchestra and sounds that, for western ears, embody the very stereotype of Chinese music is responsible for the very brew that made his opera “The First Emperor” interesting for half an hour and unbearable thereafter. The tried and culturally correct “East-meets-West” concept sounds awfully tired nowadays and third rate Puccini interrupted by collective “Yao Yao” grunts from the orchestra musicians just isn’t musically uplifting.
That grunting—and the players’ foot-stomping—caused the typical (unintended) merriment in the audience. While those moments don’t tempt me to resort to superficially amused or discomfited laughter, they make me cringe with vicarious embarrassment, teeth gnashing. (It’s one thing for four autonomous string quartet players to do it, another matter when an orchestra is coerced into doing that sort of stuff so far removed from their real expertise.) The actual moment of wit came when Tan Dun employs the sound of an orchestra tuning before he hurls himself into an unambiguously gorgeous Adagio where the orchestra finally plays music from its realm: a cantilena that has romanticized Bach at its base and Chinese spices for color.
The engrossing Pipa mastery of a player like Shao Rong would be much better served in a concert and venue specifically chosen for it. Folded into a still born orchestral chimera, the genuinely interesting pipa elements are robbed of their context and come across as no more authentically Chinese than spring rolls at McDonalds.
The novelty of the concerto, to those who heard it for the first time, may have been more interesting than the recycled conventionalism of Tan Dun’s Piano Concerto. True, it sounds like a “Soundtrack to a movie unscreened”, the thematic material is risibly short and its development haphazard, but it offers dreamy pleasantness (Lento) married to overt tempestuousness (Allegro Vivace) showing that orchestral exclamations and shouts are not necessary to create color and exoticisms. Brass squeaks enriched by wooden percussion and Nibelungen-worthy ambos hammering (Taiko drums, actually) all appear; strings and piano solo part are treated no differently to Ravel or Poulenc. It’s a shallow joyride, shamelessly romantic in the gong-heavy slow movement which is a Classic FM suitable representation of “Water” (=strings). That element and “Fire”, from the first movement, are combined in the third, where the tinkling of piano, piccolo solo, plodding piano clusters, and evocations of the pipa by the strings suggest, once more, Ravel’s piano concertos. It takes some time to find its natural conclusion which it does when Lang Lang, the soloist on duty, finishes with —literally—fist-banging chords and elbow-dragging arpeggios: conceits that the audience variously found an exciting fancy or infuriating mockery.
Tan Dun, photo by Parnassus Productions, Inc. (courtesy of tandunonline.com)
For all of the breathless excitement, including our own, over Marin Alsop's appointment as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, she will actually conduct only three concerts in Charm City this fall (beginning on September 28, October 25, and November 29). This week, joining the parade of guest conductors filling in for Alsop was Chinese-American composer Tan Dun. We have reviewed two of his operas, Tea and The First Emperor, but this was the first time we have reviewed the cello concerto titled The Map, premiered by Yo-Yo Ma and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2004. Tan has described the piece as an exploration of his return to his natal province of Hunan, where he spent time trying to document disappearing musical traditions.
Building on the theme of folk music's intertwined history with the classical orchestra, Tan programmed a first half of Russian pieces based on or at least reminiscent of Asian melodies. The relatively late Overture on Russian and Kirghiz Folk Themes, op. 115, was conceived during Dmitri Shostakovich's visit to Kirghizstan, when he promised to write a piece based on the local folk music. The overture was premiered in Frunze, the capital of Kirghizstan, in 1963, and it is definitely a second-tier piece in the Shostakovich works list, less dissonant and plainer in orchestration than his most interesting work. However, it gained in interest considerably as part of this program, as an example of the overlap between Chinese and Russian music. The BSO sounded confident, although Tan's conducting seemed to be at odds with the direction of the musicians at times.
Far more familiar to audiences, although many could probably name neither composer nor title, was Borodin's Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor. When Igor loses his campaign against the Asian nomads known as the Polovtsi, their Khan entertains him with music and dancing. Once again, the chestnut status of these pieces seemed to fade into the background because of the context of this fascinating program, inviting the listener to re-examine the work in a new light. After an overly fast start, the pace of the first dance settled into a more comfortable pace, but Tan did not seem to have paid attention to some of the melodic lines, which were not brought to the fore. The winds shimmered exotically and the low brass and percussion shook the rafters with their big booming sound. The melody that became Stranger in Paradise in the musical Kismet purled into the house without any sentimental soupiness, which was pleasing.
When Tan spoke to the audience after the Shostakovich overture on the first half, he said that the concert's theme was the roots of each composer in his own time and in the musical traditions beyond the concert hall. During trips to Hunan in 1999 and 2001, Tan imitated his acknowledged hero, Béla Bartók (who also tried "to find vanished people's music"), by speaking with and videotaping traditional musicians. Those video clips, some barely different from hand-held, clutzy-zoomed home video footage, are displayed on screens on the stage with the orchestra. Following cues from the soundtrack of the video, Tan synchronized the orchestral texture to what we see and hear, creating a dialogue between the orchestra in Baltimore and the musicians recorded in China. This called for the BSO to use their instruments in orthodox ways, with the reed players, for example, answering the guanzi and a Tuija man making sounds by blowing through a buzzing leaf by playing with their reeds separated from the instruments.
The climax of the work is a recreation of a musical style that Tan saw in Hunan in the 1980s but was not able to document on his later trips, stone drumming. Three recreations by performers on the video screens play a quartet with one of the percussionists live. It was a memorable moment. Principal cellist Ilya Finkelshteyn had the thankless task of channeling Yo-Yo Ma and played well, although the solo part was sometimes covered by noisy percussion or the video soundtrack. At one point, Finkelshteyn had a beautiful dialogue with concertmaster Jonathan Carney, their instruments warbling on the high strings like two loquacious birds. Although this concert was much appreciated by the audience, there were lots of empty seats at the back of Meyerhoff Hall. More students out there need to take advantage of the BSO's incredible Student Advantage offers: $10 rush tickets and a five-for-$25 student subscription plan! Five dollars for a concert: that is much cheaper than a movie.
The next concerts by the Baltimore Symphony will feature HK Gruber's Frankenstein!!, with the eclectic composer conducting (October 19 at Strathmore and October 20 at the Meyerhoff).
The North American premiere of Chinese-born Tan Dun’s opera Tea: A Mirror of Soul at Santa Fe Opera proved a remarkable success. With the roots of the opera more Asian than Western -- slowly building to an extreme intensity as one long phrase and containing attributes to what one may find at Tokyo’s Kabuki-za Theatre or the Vietnamese Hat Boi Opera, recently in D.C. as part of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival -- Tan Dun has convincingly furthered his stated aim to introduce Eastern opera to the West in his own personalized way. He made the point recently in the New York Times, in reference to his most recent opera, The First Emperor: “Opera will no longer be a Western form, as it is no longer an Italian form” (June 26, 2005).
Tea is an exotic commodity that among other things motivated the British to instigate the Opium Wars in the 19th century, but it fails to trigger the American imagination beyond the famous “Tea Party” of 1773, or something processed in a bag. In Asia, tea’s traditions, both ceremonial (considered an art one must study for years in order to serve) and religious (having been brought to Japan from China by Buddhist monks), have exalted tea to metaphoric heights. In an interview with the Executive Producer of Tokyo’s Suntory Hall on the occasion of the opera’s 2002 world premiere in concert form, Tan Dun said:
In my research for Tea I traveled around Japan and China, and learned that Japanese Tea is a ‘mirror of the soul.’ When I was in the southern regions of China, which is of course the home of tea, I had the opportunity to interview an eminent nun. She always presents to her first-time guests an empty tea bowl, and on such occasions she herself also puts an empty tea bowl to her lips, as if to drain it of its contents. In this very action her spiritual world-view becomes vividly apparent. For me, there was something greatly enlightening about the spirit of Chinese tea as made manifest in her, and about the spirit of Japanese tea.
The overture begins with long, unison bass tones, followed by hazy water-sounding string tones by three players gracefully spinning their way through the audience with unique instruments. Act I, titled “Water, Fire,” is set in an incense-filled tea garden of a tranquil Kyoto monastery where time seems to stand still. Three girls at first appear to be washing their hands in large, elevated glass bowls on opposite sides of the stage, which turn out to be amplified for percussive effect. The Chorus of Monks enters singing long notes, similar to the bass sounds that have continued in the orchestra. The three on-stage percussionists (Haruka Fujii, Chihiro Shibayama, and Yuri Yamashita) begin striking the water rhythmically – the work’s first rhythm.
Seikyo (Haijing Fu, metaphor of discovery/philosophy), a monk and the main character, sings, “though the bowl is empty, scent glows; though shadow is gone, dream grows,” and slowly drinks from an empty bowl. Startlingly to the ears, the pitch of the bass drone changes as the upper-strings begin sliding around in unison, which is a typical orchestration found in Asian, Arab, Irish, and Old-Time North American music. From this point, the three on-stage percussionists place brass disks into the water bowls creating vibrations by rubbing them with something red; shake long, water-filled glass tubes filled with glass beads rhythmically; and later let water drop from modest height through pasta strainers into the bowls. This takes place during Seikyo’s slow sliding between notes in rich baritone voice, with the monastic stillness never disturbed.
Scene two is set ten years earlier in the Chinese Emperor’s palace, where in elaborate costume Princess Lan (Kelly Kaduce, metaphor of love) and the Prince (Roger Honeywell, metaphor of anger) are performing The Monkey King, a shadow-puppet opera for their father, the Emperor (Christian van Horn, metaphor of tradition/culture). The shadows are seen through the rice paper windows of a striking red box now centered on stage. As wind instruments join the texture, Seikyo interrupts the puppet show and soon asks the Emperor to choose a theme to display his skill at poetry in order to win the Princess’s hand. He chooses tea, and Seikyo replies about the sensuousness and beauty of tea, with a long melisma on the final word “tea”. With growing string textures, the Lady of Ritual (Nancy Maultsby, metaphor tea/messenger for spirit) enters in Native American mini-headdress to prepare the tea, which they enjoy to repeated gong and percussion rhythms. From this point, the plot thickens with Italianate fervor, though Asian delivery (i.e., jealousy), in a romantic scene during which dancers create ying-yang motions, dueling, accidental death, etc., and concludes back at the monastic tea garden.
Act II, titled “Paper,” utilizes multiple large hanging rice paper sheets that when shaken, sharply create the sound of wind. Act III, titled “Ceramic, Stones,” utilizes the Chorus of Monks tapping stones together rhythmically to build intensity preceding the Princess’s murder by her brother. These techniques were also reinforced by the three capable on-stage percussionists.
Overall, at just over two hours in length, the opera was very well sung, and each character embodied their assigned metaphors. Librettists Tan Dun and Xu Ying’s sparing use of language increased the audience’s reliance on sound to understand context, something that conductor Lawrence Renes did an excellent job conveying. If you did not care for the Met’s world premiere of Tan Dun’s The First Emperor last season, see this production.
Tan Dun and Zhang Yimou speak about The First Emperor
See also this portfolio of Ken Howard's beautiful photographs of the production
Peter Gelb has done a good thing with the simulcasts of live performances from the Metropolitan Opera. If the large numbers of people willing to shell out $18 for a movie ticket -- for the maiden broadcast of The Magic Flute, theaters were filled to 91% of capacity -- are any indication, there is a niche market for opera out there. But seriously, what will it take to get these broadcasts on PBS? This seems to me to be an obvious part of public television's supposed duty to broadcast cultural programming. (Network television is just a pipe dream.) People who may not be able to go the movie theater, either because of timing or cost, would benefit. Most of all, television would make it possible for a viewer, even a kid, to happen upon live opera by chance. No one going to the movie theater to see Happy Feet or whatever is going to think, "Maybe I will pay twice as much to see that opera."
Since I did not make it up to New York to see Tan Dun's new opera, The First Emperor, I was at the simulcast on January 13. Critics have largely judged the opera a failure, but the Met has sold out all performances. Audiences seem to be pleased, although the applause at the matinee was polite but restrained. Now that I have heard and seen it for myself, I think that the nay voices have it right.
The story should be epic, since the title character is Qin Shihuang, the warlord who created the first Chinese imperial dynasty and from whose name we get the country's name, China. The libretto (by the composer and novelist Ha Jin), however, focuses on Qin's obsession with a piece of music he wants composed. The story has been adapted from a movie called The Emperor's Shadow (1996), directed by Zhou Xiaowen on a screenplay by Lu Wei. It is not derived from historical sources but is a sort of historical fiction. The results make the story a little silly, which registered in the audience's laughter every time Qin mentioned his imperial anthem.
The score has some weak points, unfortunately enough of them to outweigh the exciting sounds Tan Dun brings together. As Lisa Hirsch noted in her extensive and perceptive comments on the opera, the major mistake was in the many sections that sounded grossly derivative of Puccini. At one point, I actually thought the orchestra might break into a rousing finale of "Nessun dorma." Several scenes drag on far too long, long after the listener gets the idea. If the creative team has the chance to revisit the opera, with the serious intention of revising it, before the production in Los Angeles, it could be possible to save The First Emperor.
Brian of Out West Arts noted this weekend the two main advantages of seeing the simulcast. First, the choice of shots is excellent, with views of the sets and backstage area close up, including watching the singers coming off the stage or preparing for curtain calls. Theater viewers do not have the effect of hearing the sound in that cavernous house (although we could clearly hear the backstage prompter feeding forgotten lines to Domingo -- I counted three), but we have closeups of the singers, conductor (Tan Dun is an expressive man), and even members of the orchestra (watching them shout the words in the score, sometimes confusing which word to shout, was a stitch). Second, the intermission features are excellent, especially when the host is Beverly Sills. As I said in a post about the recent PBS documentary on Sills, Bubbles has always been a very funny lady.
Remaining Met simulcasts this season include Eugene Onegin (February 24), The Barber of Seville (March 24), and Il Trittico (April 28). All simulcasts begin at 1:30 pm (NB: time is Eastern time zone). Due to popular demand, there will be a rebroadcast of The Magic Flute this evening (January 23, 7:30 pm). Because that will be from the recorded feed, it will take place at that time in all American time zones.
UPDATE: As if in answer to my prayer, reader Garth Trinkl informs us (in the comments) that PBS will be broadcasting the Julie Taymor Magic Flute (in English). In Washington, you can watch it on WETA TV (Channel 26) on Wednesday night (January 24, 9 pm), with a repeat if your DVR goes awry early Sunday morning (January 28, 3 am). Bravo, PBS!
Opera as a living art form is not exactly an endangered species, but its health is undoubtedly fragile. To a large extent its pulse stems from new conceptions of old masterpieces rather than new, original works. This may not be surprising, since the composition of a modern opera that scores points on accessibility, popularity, high musical quality, and novelty must be the most challenging project a composer/librettist team can undertake.
Most operas ever created are of little value; only the most outstanding operas (and some lesser ones by composers who have a few such masterpieces to their name) survive in the repertoire. It should therefore not be surprising that most contemporary operas, too, leave much to be desired, are either flawed, mediocre, or downright awful. But since there are so few contemporary operas that come to the wider attention of the public, that rate of failure vs. success is hard to stomach. One wishes them to succeed, but the offerings are such that they can be safely crossed off the list of future opera house staples. Tan Dun’s Metropolitan Opera-commissioned The First Emperor is one such opera.
Once the hype (as a world premiere at the Met always brings with it), hipness, and star power dissipate from the project, it will run on fumes and fall out of favor. It might get more chances than Democracy and Shadowtime (it will feature on the LA Opera season in 2008, thanks to Plácido Domingo), fewer than Sophie’s Choice… but its footprint on the opera landscape will most likely be shallow.
If The First Emperor does not offer the direction of 21st-century opera, it is not for lack of ambition. “What is the music that can harmonize Heaven and Earth and Man?” is the question that Tan Dun and his Emperor in the opera are posing. Neither delivers or gets the answer. Tan Dun stipulates “It’s not about being Chinese or Western, about being old or new… my favorite formula now is 1 + 1 = 1.” Reading that might have been a bad omen, since the ‘formula’ might be mildly thought-provoking – but is, of course, plain wrong. The First Emperor uncomfortably straddles the new and the old, Western and Chinese, and there is no synthesis in sight or earshot during the three hours it lasts.
The First Emperor deals with Qin Shi Huang (Plácido Domingo), ‘Father of China’ (also responsible for those terra cotta soldiers) and uniter of its separate provinces who seeks a unifying anthem for his forged empire. He does so amid affairs of dramatic love, betrayal, and death. Unfortunately the love occurs between his childhood friend, the composer Gao Janli (Paul Groves) and his daughter (Elizabeth Futral, well known to Washington audiences) who is inconveniently promised to Qin’s master general, Wang, who conquered the other provinces and, in the process, killed the composers mother and enslaved his people. The composer agrees to write the anthem after his hunger strike is broken by (the crippled) Princess Yueyang’s mouth-to-mouth feeding attempts. (Love at first regurgitation, it seems.) Princess Yueyang is so inspired by that love that she starts to walk again. The fact that his daughter’s behavior forces him break his promise to his general, however, sours Emperor Qin’s joy over her rehabilitation and the to-be-composed anthem – and in a chain of rambling events leads to the deaths of Yueyang, the general, and Gao Janli who bites his tongue off and spits it at the Emperor before being slain. He gets his ultimate revenge by having made the anthem a “Slave Song” in which he mourns the fate of the conquered peoples of China.
Tan Dun’s research for the opera took him to ancient Chinese music, singing styles, and instruments from which he creates a novel sound for the opera – inspired by Tan Dun’s vision of ancient music, rather than what that music might actually have sounded like... it is “his own musical language rooted in tradition”. On the vocal front it “occurred to [Tan Dun] that ancient Chinese and Italian music sounded surprisingly close to one another” whereupon he thought that he “could combine the expressive power of Chinese singing with the long lines of Italian opera,” hoping for a “fresh and exciting” result. That noble and intriguing goal is somewhat undermined by the fact that The First Emperor is sung in English, a difficult language for opera to sound natural in (much less emphasize long, Italianate, lines), and employed (instead of Chinese or even Italian) to the detriment of the opera.
Those ancient sounds clash – blatantly – with overtly Western tunes that range from Broadway Musical moments to film music with downright hackneyed elements. As the novelty rubs off the ancient sound-world (and it does, over the course of three hours), it is replaced by mild annoyance. (Repetition is not used as a composition tool here, it seems; repetitiveness is merely a result.) I am afraid that the second or third outing for this work (Co-producer LA Opera is next), all-important though that is for a modern work, will not enhance the appreciation; only the irritation. That feeling is exacerbated by the occasional outbreak of conventionalisms that are transparently designed to ‘please’ and provide ‘greatest hits’ moments in the way that some of the worst Puccini is. (I think in particular of the ‘Hymn to Florence” aria, “Firenze è come un albero fiorito,” in Gianni Schicchi.) In those moments, Tan Dun leaves the quality of his innovative orchestration in other parts well behind: epic sweeps of surging, homogenous brass combine with borderline-cheesy vocal and choral turns and phrases, accompanied by terrible or terribly tried lyrics. “Locked in love’s embrace,” “My Lord, please master your temper,” and “Can a stone cry? Can a turtle fly?” are so bad (or clichéd), they belie the fact that the libretto was composed in English (the National Book Award-winning novelist Ha Jin is Tan Dun’s co-author), rather than having been translated from the Chinese. Miss Saigon is closer here than Madame Butterfly.
That the music does not seem to fit the words only contributes to the clunky, awkward feel: Giving three notes to the only syllable of “does” or four to “he” is a difficult task to pull off, after all. The tendency to dramatize words with an accelerated ff before a near immediate decay swallows its last letters might be taken from traditional Chinese singing (or calligraphy) but strikes me more of average modernist Western writing for the voice (of flute). The haltingly breathed “I . took . my . own . life” that the appearing ghost of the unfortunate Princess Yueyang declaims after her long monologue near the end of the second and last act is gratuitously undramatic, especially as it comes as a surprise to no one in the audience. “Near the end” is not quite accurate, actually, because although the end of the opera seems in sight at that point, it manages to go on, somewhat inconclusively, for another half hour; possibly the worst 30 minutes of the opera. The second scene of the second act drags itself to the conclusion slower than the princess’ dead appearance, backwards, from the stage. The showdown between the characters of King and composer spirals toward the unbearable – enhanced by the fragmented, shapeless dialogue. (After the composer's tongue-biting last words the Emperor proceeds with a monologue that isn’t much better.)
If this sounds like The First Emperor is rather meritless, it does so because the visual element and the singing have not yet been considered. Indeed, I can’t imagine anyone gaining much from an audio-recording of this opera. As theater, however, it works… somewhat. The staging (House of Flying Daggers director Zhang Yimou, Academy Award®-winning costume designer Emi Wada) features a simple, ingenious set-design (Fan Yue) that provides many delights to the eye (and distracts the ear). Steep bleachers extend from stage front to back. Suspended gray stone-blocks dangle from above and offer the chorus room to line up behind, as an army, carry these blocks as slaves, mimic court-entourage on the Great Wall, or sing as retinue in the (disheveled) palace. Lighting turns the bleachers into a prison for the dancers (slaves) behind it; has characters appear and disappear like ghosts (or spies) during the love scene. The costumes are colorful (to a fault in the last “Anthem” scene where the chorus in bright dresses looks like a row of carnival costumes hung out to dry in a laundry commercial), the choreography seamless. Principle dancer Dou Dou Huang used some of the moments during which the drama lagged to very impressive effect. Court musicians – zheng player (the instrument is a Chinese zither) Qi Yao, a chorus of drummers (using stones instead of sticks), and ceramic bowl players all added atmosphere – visually and acoustically.
On the level of the staging was the singing… led by a (surprisingly) vigorous, fresh, Plácido Domingo who had no trouble filling the Met’s round with his voice. The role having been written for him, it was well suited to what is essentially a high baritone now. Elizabeth Futral as the Princess had to master a taxing part and did it with distinction, high leaps and all. Paul Groves, Shaman Michelle DeYoung, and Susanne Mentzer, the King’s wife, faultlessly served their parts. Bass Hao Jiang (General Wang) had some problem with his (very) low notes; Yin-Yang master Wu Hsing Kuo, the only Chinese singing/speaking part and a performance-art element that contributed to the general ‘Turandot goes Edward Scissorhands – The Musical’ feel.
The First Emperor is an event necessary for opera, desirable and commendable – entirely (or at least mostly) unrelated to the achieved result. Peter Gelb, the new Met GM (Joseph Volpe commissioned the work many years ago), is absolutely right when he says that “commissioning new works from contemporary composers [I wonder what other composers you could commission operas from - jfl] (needs to be) at the heart of the Met’s efforts to keep opera alive and in the mainstream. (…) Mozart, Verdi, Wagner and Puccini alone cannot sustain the artform in perpetuity.” Indeed, we need more such premieres, more stabs at 21st-century opera – even if in this instance the result was disheartening more than anything else.
The future of opera will take a genius to figure out – because at this point it is scarcely imaginable what could fulfill the criteria mentioned in the first paragraph. Even the better attempts I have seen so far, live or on DVD (L’amour de Loin, The Palace, Susannah), demand a good deal of charity, effort, and interest to make their impact… to entertain. Light opera has become the Musical, ever since Gilbert & Sullivan, with the musical quality reliably low. Tan Dun, amid this, has delivered something that teeters between ‘ambitious near-miss’ and ‘valiant failure’… he certainly hasn’t delivered the future of opera. The curious opera lovers should take a look and listen at The First Emperor anyway, of course. Either at the Met (January 5th, 9th, 13th, 22nd, or 25th) or at a movie theater near you which will show The First Emperor (as well as four other Met productions this season) live (!) in high-definition from the Met. You can access the list of participating theaters at www.bigscreenconcerts.com.
