I've often thought it would be interesting to hear a Chinese opera, even though I know that it's a completely different form from the kind more familiar to Westerners. This is not that, but is a brave attempt to infuse Occidental opera with Chinese music and dramatic sensibilities. With mixed results.
It's about Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of a united China. He's annoyed because he doesn't like the traditional music he's hearing, so he wants to bring in his childhood friend, the composer Gao Jianli, to write him an anthem. So he has his troops subjugate the province where Jianli lives and bring him back as a prisoner (...you couldn't just have, I don't know, asked him?). Jianli is none too happy about this because his village was destroyed and his mother killed and says, screw you and your dumb anthem. The Emperor's daughter crippled Yueyang is impressed by this guy and gets her dad to let her try to convince him to write the anthem. They fall in love and she isn't crippled anymore. The problem is, the Emperor had promised his daughter to General Wang for conquering Jianli's province. Therefore, she commits suicide. Jianli rips out his tongue in grief so the Emperor mercy-kills him. Then he's sad. And that's about that.
I really like the music here. The effort to marry Western and Eastern is really apparent, and very intriguing: a lot of traditional Chinese instruments mixed with more traditional Romantic stuff--it's good. Tan is an interesting composer, for sure.
But...the music is really the only interesting thing here. I realize that's a pretty big "thing," but it's far from the only thing in an opera. The Met really, really wanted this opera they'd commissioned to be a big thing, so--among other things, which we'll get to--they got Placido Domingo to play the title role. Which is fine, I guess...but seriously, neither he nor anyone else gets anything memorable to actually sing. No show-stopping arias or anything of that sort. The story is supposed to be a big, epic thing showing the contradictions of this great emperor who could also be tremendously cruel--but as presented, it's actually very thin stuff. None of the characters are given any depth, and the English-language libretto is incredibly clunky. This really should have been seriously revised before being performed.
And, yes, they obviously wanted it to be big. One uncomfortable contradiction that I have to live with is that, while I love a large-scale Met production, the money for these things comes from really unsavory people. Michael Bloomberg is a horrible creature who I wish didn't exist--and yet, he donates millions of dollars to the Met. He has definitely contributed in a large way to be having transcendent artistic experiences. What am I supposed to do with that? If my fondest political dreams were realized, we just wouldn't have huge operatic projects like this. There would, I'd hope, still be opera, but not on this scale.
So that's something I have to think about. But I don't have to think about it with regards to The First Emperor. I don't think this is true, but if you thought that the Met was entering a period of decadence, you would definitely want to point to this as your most compelling piece of evidence. It's obvious that massive amounts of cash were pumped into this, but to what end? Did anyone have any actual artistic vision here? Because the very strong impression I get is that this is big and expensive for the sake of bigness and expensiveness. The sets and costumes are super-elaborate. You can see where the money went. But rarely have I seen so much spent to so little effect. It remains dramatically inert. On balance, this is a mediocre opera in any event, and the fact that it's been gussied up as much as it has doesn't obscure that fact; it accentuates it.
I will grant that there were some good intentions here: the production is nothing if not culturally respectful. And the idea of bringing Chinese sensibilities and aesthetics into Western opera is a good one. But I can't say that the actual product here is much to shout about.
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