BEIJING, March 15 -- I'm glad I had not seen Tan
Dun's new opera The First Emperor when I wrote about its critical feedback and
the composer's defense ("How the West was won or not", Jan. 12, 2007). It would
have been difficult not to bring my own feelings into it.
The one I did catch later on was a recent
high-definition transmission into theaters of the Metropolitan Opera performance
on Jan. 13. And a technical glitch skipped some 15 minutes over the end of Act
I.
This Emperor is not perfect, but no way is it a total
flop. The melding of Chinese musical elements enriched the expressiveness of the
essentially Western art form, in which Tan's work is rooted. The instrumental
part is especially colorful, with tinges of Chinese sounds seeping into the
bones.
Strangely, it is the role of the Yin Yang Master that
I found has failed to be "the eye of the dragon", so to speak, as I had
expected. The voice was weak, and the role, as a variation of the Greek chorus,
was somewhat imposed on the palette.
The big arias and choruses, with melodic lines and
fetching accompaniment, were quite rewarding. Several of them have the potential
to turn into hum-able numbers of a standard repertory. It is the duets that
failed to click with me. Although Tan had done away with recitatives, singing
for the sake of exposition, no matter how dramatic the vocal lines are written,
just feel weird to a modern ear. It's a problem with all contemporary operas,
not just this one.
But when the characters begin to emote, Tan did not
disappoint. As a matter of fact, the long passages of singing are mostly
brilliant, at least to my taste. And I bet the subtle effects, which he added
with such ingenuity, would be much effective if recorded in a studio with the
New Age-like sounds better balanced.
The libretto, written by Ha Jin and Tan Dun, takes a
character with stark moral contrast and imbues him with ambivalence. Here
Emperor Qin is not simply a tyrant or a unifier of China, but both. His inner
struggles may not be historically accurate, but psychologically convincing.
What's more, many of the details have such relevance that they may resonate more
than the authors intend. The second part, with emphasis on recounting rather
than playing out the plot, is even better than the linear narration in Act I.
The singers were uniformly stellar, tackling the
Eastern sounds with gusto and authenticity. Placido Domingo brought more
humanness to the role, which most Chinese abhor as a ruthless despot, and
portrayed him most of all as a father.
You have to give credit to Zhang Yimou and his team
because the visual part almost stole spotlight from the production.
The partition of the stage with numerous blocks
created such infinite possibilities that it turned into the Great Wall, the
royal palace or other settings with just the right balance of abstractness and
reality.
It is more tastefully artful than Zhang's previous
operatic outing in Turandot, or any of his other stage productions, yet still
retains his signature spectacle.
(Source: China Daily)
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