The First Emperor: A Tan Dun Opera

The First Emperor: A Tan Dun Opera
Out From the Shadows: Tan Dun Revives The First Emperor at the Met
By James Anthony Phillips


Composer Tan Dun first came to prominence in the United States with his Oscar-winning score to Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Tiger in 2000. The composer has continued to delight a wide variety of audiences with his concert hall works and later collaborations with director Zhang Yimou, as on Hero (2002). (Yimou also directed one of my favorite genre films, House of Flying Daggers (2004).) Dun’s music ranges from lush Western Romanticism to a more gentle, but emotional Asian minimalism.
This past Saturday, May 10, I saw a revised version of Dun’s fourth opera, The First Emperor, at The Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in New York City, starring Placido Domingo in the title role. The cast is a mix of Chinese and Americans, with the 67-year old Domingo’s vocal range now impressively reaching to lower and lower depths. Hao Jiang Tian as General Wang, and Haijing Fu as the Chief Minister, will no doubt have long careers at the Met.
Dun collaborated on the libretto with National Book Award-winner Ha Jin. They based the story in part on Lu Wei’s original screenplay The Legend of the Bloody Zheng, which was filmed as The Emperor’s Shadow in 1996. The setting is during the reign of Qin Shi Huang, who is credited with building the Great Wall on the backs of the peasants, and of uniting China through “bloody constraint,” as Henry V would have put it.
The opera was directed by the aforementioned Yimou, who delivers one of the most breathtakingly cinematic stage productions of the past few years. The only other recent opera to come close was last year’s War and Peace. The First Emperor’s pared-down first act deleted a duet and quickened the pacing, allowing for a more fluid storyline. However, it is the music, the vocal ranges of the principals, and Emi Wada’s (who rightfully won the Academy Award for her costumes for Akira Kurosawa’s Ran in 1985) glorious, colorful costumes that really propel the action.
The orchestration includes ceramic water bowls, authentic Chinese drums struck with stones rather than mallets, and stringed instruments. Dun knows how to combine the lushness of Puccini’s La Boheme and Verdi’s Tosca with the musical stylings of his native land. I have seen several composers conduct their own scores (including John Adams, Philip Glass and Andre Previn), but none as lovingly as Dun. Try to catch this at one the two remaining performances before it moves out of town. For more information, visit www.metopera.org.
The author can be reached at japhillips219@msn.com.
—FSM