The Metropolitan Opera: Tan Dun and Zhang Yimou's The First Emperor

According to the New York Times, "the Great Wall of China [is] built and torn down on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera for Zhang Yimou’s production of Tan Dun’s highly anticipated new opera, 'The First Emperor,' which opens on Dec. 21." I'm looking forward to seeing it:

Among its challenges in staging this opera, the Met is working with a predominantly Chinese, non-English-speaking production team, headed by Mr. Zhang, China’s best-known filmmaker (“Raise the Red Lantern,” “Hero,” “House of Flying Daggers”). Mr. Zhang says he is no fan of Western opera productions. His theatrical visions, as for the only other opera he has directed, nearly a decade ago, are large and bright enough to fill Beijing’s Forbidden City, the foot of a mountain or an Olympic stadium.

“It’s on a pretty big scale, even for our stage,” said Joe Clark, the Met’s technical director, who has overseen the company’s production side — scenery, lights, sound, special effects, wigs, costumes, makeup, stage maintenance, carpentry and electric shops — since 1980. “It’s like ‘Hero,’ in that instead of 10 of something, there’s a hundred of them, all of which must work in perfect coordination.”

Mr. Tan wrote the music for Mr. Zhang’s “Hero,” to which “The First Emperor” is a prequel. [...]

What arose on the Met stage this summer was different.

About 250 plywood rectangular blocks, some as long as three feet, are each suspended from two ropes. In the final scene they become the building blocks of the Great Wall. Throughout the opera the blocks will be shifted, pushed, pulled, lifted and flipped, sometimes by the 90 members of the chorus and the 40 dancers, to create different scenes.

The simulated stones hover above and beside an enormous black aluminum stairway, 36 steps high and resembling an enormous grandstand, which occupies the length and breadth of the stage throughout the opera. Most of the action takes place on the steps, which can become transparent, creating two visible worlds, one atop the structure and another beneath it.

Amid all this abstraction appear magnificent, historically authentic props, like a painted-lacquer bed, on which a sex scene takes place (while dancers writhe beneath the steps), and a huge Chinese carpet fit for the feet of the imperial family. The emperor’s umbrella-shaded chariot looks like the bronze version unearthed along with the thousands of terra-cotta soldiers near Qin Shi Huangdi’s tomb in Xian.

But it was the unexpected effect of the hundreds of hanging ropes — seven miles long when laid end to end — that seemed to evince the most delight from the dozen or so people watching the tech rehearsals. (“We finally got enough rope to hang ourselves,” Mr. Clark quoted one stagehand as saying.)

“The ropes create an atmosphere I’ve never seen before,” said Mr. Schuler, the lighting designer. “They offer a palette to work on.” [...]

Must opera change to be embraced by a new, global generation? Mr. Zhang and Mr. Tan think so.

“I believe we can attract a younger generation from both sides of the world,” Mr. Zhang said earlier this year in a meeting at the Met. “The visual part, the stage elements, are very important to them.”

Mr. Tan, who was interpreting for him, inserted a long measure of East-West harmony: “As artists, we really hope through the visual and the musical contact, the American people and the Chinese people can be good brothers, and so it will be good for the people and good for opera. It’s much better than the sports context, because sports is competitive — fighting — but opera is unity and harmony.”

Well, yes, if you don’t pay attention to the story of “The First Emperor,” which includes betrayal, self-mutilation and mass murder.

Comments

[Nanette]

This sounds like it will be an amazing production. If you go see it you'll have to take copious notes, pictures (if allowed) and bring it to life for the rest of us on a blog screen.

That's not too much to ask, is it?

[Nezua Limón Xolagrafik-Jonez]

ah the harmony of evisceration!

have hero, love it.

[Kai]

Nanette: I'll do my very best. I hope you'll forgive your humble blogger if the report doesn't quite live up to the awe-inspiring grandeur of the thing. ;-) Of course, the first task is to secure tickets, which will be no easy feat in logistical or economic terms; but when I decide to do something, the barriers usually fall, so let's hope this pattern holds.

Nezua: "Hero" is awesome, innit? I've been watching kung-fu flicks for as long as I remember going to movies (used to be in Chinese community halls in Chinatown or on college campuses) -- but "Hero" is special in its bold, sophisticated, elegant simplicity. We'll see if this carries over into opera...I remain somewhat skeptical, but I'm also ready to be impressed.

[belledame222]

o wow, that looks AMAZING.