(response to the Metropolitan Opera's high-definition broadcast of THE FIRST EMPEROR, a new opera by Tan Dun and Ha Jin, and to a couple of reviews of it in the NY Times and Atlanta Journal Constitution.)
When I couldn't drop everything, fly to NYC, and buy a $400 ticket to see the Met Opera, I had to take the word of critics. Now, with high definition live broadcasts to a big screen movie theatre in Atlanta, I can see for myself how wrong the critics were. The creators of THE FIRST EMPEROR, from librettist and composer through to the designers and choreographers, right on down to the performers - even the chorus and orchestra - showed imagination, ingenuity, and evident pleasure in creating a dramatic spectacle that is a world apart from anything else I've seen.
As we hear some alien sounds from the orchestra, a visitor from Chinese opera appears in front of a vast curtain depicting the unfinished wall of China and Chinese characters. This visitor, "Yin Yang Master" with a mocking red face front and a demure masked face behind, sets the tone for the epic story: beware irony, he seems to say. He sets the action two thousand years ago.
The curtain opens on breathtaking spectacle and sound. Stairs occupy the whole stage from curtain back to its upper reaches. The chorus is arrayed in rows dressed as soldiers modeled on the famous clay modeled soldiers of that time. It's several minutes before we hear anything that sounds like our Western music. The Yin Yang Master screeches and laughs, the chorus slaps its thighs in rhythm, and even the orchestra is shouting, growling, and whooping on cue. In front, a line of serious looking men bang drums with stones, and knock or rub the stones together. A percussionist in costume knocks ceramic pots that make bell-like sounds.
When Placido Domingo enters, he demands "Silence!" and calls for a new kind of music to replace this ancient sound. (In a documentary feature at intermission, we learn that Tan Dun based this opening sequence on pictures and literary descriptions of the music of the time, though no one knows how the instruments were played.) Domingo as Emperor Xin (for whom "China" is named) sets up the metaphor that shapes the entire opera, the yin and yang of Music and Silence, Light and Shadow. He calls for his old friend, his cellmate from a time in his life when he was jailed, a composer whom he calls "Shadow."
When Shadow is captured by Xin's prospective son-in-law the general, the conflicts of the piece are clear at once. The general loves Xin's daughter, while the princess (petulant, energetic, and disabled by a childhood injury to her legs) is immediately interested in her father's "shadow," and the composer himself defies the emperor whose army leveled his village, enslaved his people, and killed his mother. Motivating the plot, Xin is determined to have a piece of music that will unify his vast empire. We sense, then, that some piece of music will somehow be the climax of this opera, and we've been warned that it won't be what the emperor ordered.
Along the way to the end, we have great moments.
There is the romance between Princess and Composer, which miraculously restores her ability to walk. He won't eat or speak or even open his eyes, in defiance of the emperor; she extracts a promise from her father that she can marry him if she can make him speak. This is a wonderful seduction scene, in which the action is amplified by lurking presences behind the actors: percussionists bowing hand-held bells, and dancers making suggestive moves glimpsed under the stairs.
There is a scene of a chorus of slaves building the Great Wall, singing of their only dream: to lie in a grave on a hill side near home. Tan Dun's music here is notable for simplicity and sparse accompaniment - mere glances of orchestral sound - and for extremely long diminuendos. As they sing in their drab slaves' costumes, the Composer wanders among them dressed finely in blue. He is now the Princess's lover and Emperor's employee.
During a thrilling orchestral interlude, we watch the ceremonial dressing of the Composer for the Emperor's inauguration, at which the long-awaited national anthem will be heard.
The final scene is a grand spectacle that begins with the conventional song of praise that the Emperor would expect. By the end, however, the Composer has had his most-appropriate revenge.
Alien as the setting and some of the music was, there were also many parallels to traditional operas. The doting Verdi father is here; the willful and erotic Princess Salome is here; the chorus of Hebrew slaves from Nabucco is referenced. And, of course, the Emperor is MacBeth. Having fought his way to the top of the world, he has lost everything that made the triumph worth having -- friendship, family, love, and respect. His triumph is a mockery of him, and a tragedy for his kingdom.
Critics said that the audience was bored, that the opera needed extensive cutting, that Domingo looked ridiculous, that the story line was unclear. Sorry, critics: we've seen it with our own eyes, and you're way off-base.
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