Ambitious Chinese saga 'The First Emperor' premieres at the Met

NEW YORK: The relative rarity of world premieres at the Metropolitan Opera does not alone explain the buildup of good will, genuine excitement and high expectation over "The First Emperor," the opera by the Chinese-American composer Tan Dun, which had its premiere on Thursday night, conducted by the composer.

Over the years Tan has drawn new audiences to classical music with eclectic works that find common ground between Asian traditions and the avant-garde. His ferociously propulsive film score for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" won him both an Oscar and a pop-culture following. Zhang Yimou, the Chinese director of this production, best known for his popular film "House of Flying Daggers," also adds luster to the project. And Plácido Domingo, by taking on the title role, the first role he has created in his 38 years at the Met, contributes his formidable star power.

The story of the opera, based on incidents from the life of Qin Shi Huang, the prince and warlord who unified China through the brutal conquest of other states and became the country's first emperor, is timely and psychologically complex. That all nine performances are essentially sold out is good news for the Met, for contemporary music and for opera overall. My guess is that a large number of the ticket holders are opera neophytes attracted by the novelty of this project and hoping for a grand theatrical experience.

Still, music drives the theatrical experience of opera, and Tan's score is an enormous disappointment, all the more so because whole stretches of it, and many arresting musical strokes, confirm his gifts.

The opera, with a libretto in English by Tan and the writer Ha Jin, begins hauntingly with sounds of the East. Muffled drums and the humming drone of the waterphone (a bowed instrument with a bowl full of water) seem to come from the beyond, as low tremolos and a slinky melody emerge from the strings. The Yin-Yang Master (Wu Hsing-Kuo), singing in the style of Beijing opera, with nasal tone and vocal slides, takes us back 2,000 years to introduce the story of the emperor, who has roused his army and the people of Qin (pronounced chin) to conquer their neighbors and ward off barbarians. A row of 12 costumed palace musicians playing enormous Chinese drums thwack out pummeling rhythms as the riled-up choristers, the people of Qin, ask in chilling outbursts who their next victims will be.

The musical problems start shortly after Domingo appears, in the regalia of the emperor, and calls for the people to desist in their savage cries. He now controls the most feared army in the land and is bent on wiping out cultural differences in the conquered regions of China. What his nation needs is a stirring musical anthem to foster unity, he explains, in the opera's first flight into lyricism.

But Tan's approach to operatic lyricism and vocal writing seems ill-conceived. In preparing this work, he drew on his studies of ancient Chinese folk music, filtering those styles through techniques learned by attending almost every opera the Met produced during his years in New York, starting with his days as a graduate student and a fledgling professional musician. He wanted "The First Emperor" to sing, like the Italian operas he and countless other buffs adore.

His music does sing. And sing. And sing. On and on. Whatever the mood of the moment, whether dreamy, defiant, sensual or tragic, as soon as the characters break into song, the melodic lines are inevitably long, arching and slow. Even when the orchestra bustles with intensity, the often cloying vocal lines hovering above still move with almost unvarying deliberateness. In the Italian operas Tan has in mind — say, Puccini's "Turandot" — the pacing of vocal lines accords with the impetuosity of the moment and the flow of the words. Tan's goal in this work, it would seem, was to create a ritualistic and hypnotic lyricism. But "The First Emperor" gives soaring melody a bad name.

Also, because Tan integrates Chinese melodic elements into the music, the vocal lines continually move by wide and sometimes awkward leaps to unusual notes, making the phrases tiring for the singers. There is undeniable artistry at work in all this. Playing through these passages on the piano (from the piano-vocal score), I found some of Tan's exotic harmonies and elusive vocal lines enticing. But a little of this goes a long way.

Between the scenes of ruminative lyricism come orchestral passages that are much more inventive and effective. Take, for example, the crucial third scene of Act I. Emperor Qin has implored Gao Jianli, his estranged childhood friend and a gifted musician, to compose the unifying anthem. But Gao Jianli, whose mother was killed when his homeland was conquered by the emperor, is full of bitterness and resists. Princess Yueyang, the emperor's willful and alluring daughter, has fallen for Gao Jianli, even though she is pledged to the emperor's right arm, General Wang. In this scene, the princess slowly seduces Gao Jianli, who cannot resist her.