Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the most lavish spectacles ever to be called an opera, 10 Oct 2008
I have been waiting for this to be released on DVD with baited breath having first caught it on Sky Arts over a year ago.
Tan Dun is one of the most significant artists of our age, having become a living bridge between the finest artistic traditions of the West and of the many thousnd years of artistic tradition of the most populous nation on Earth. He manages to integrate what is alien to each culture in a manner that has huge popular appeal yet has the highest artistic credentials of originality and imagination.
Tan Dun is perhaps better known to Western audiences as the composer of the music for the oustanding Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but is also known as a writer of film music in the East. His concert and chamber music is probably the most assimilable of of all attempts at Western Chinese musical integration. His Heaven Earth Mankind Tan Dun - Symphony 1997 is possibly the best known of his concert works, composed around a set of bells that had recently been excavated in Hubei province, and dating from the 5th Century BCE and include beautiful parts for the Cello of Yo-Yo Ma and children's choir. Another astonishing example of his work with which I am familiar is Tan Dun: Ghost Opera which was perfomed in conjunction with the ever intrepid Kronos Quartet and scored for instruments that included stones, paper, water and gongs.
The opera, The First Emperor, derives from the mythology of the life of Ying Zheng, the first Emperor of China to emerge from the warring states period in the 3rd Century BCE. Builder of the Great Wall and creator of the famous Terracotta Army. The life of the man is greatly obscured by myth and controversy and the intrigues of his household. The opera focuses on the mythological story whereby the Emperor seeks to induce a famous composer from one of his conquered territories to prduce an anthem that, by the magical power of music, will bind the empire together into a unified whole. The composer is reluctant until he falls in love with the Emperor's beautiful daughter, whereby intrigue and tragedy unfold.
The scope and scale of the production are absolutely epic, coming from a production team many of whom are from China. The costumes are all absolutely beautiful and are at times used en-masse to create living art. After the music and vocal performances, they are what stays in the mind most after the spectacle is complete. The stagecraft is very imaginative and includes a cast of hundreds, who at one point are constructing the great wall. There are also numerous elements from classical Chinese opera used, face masks, hand gestures, acrobatics and startling choreography. The scale of the spectacle is such that you would not necessarily need to be an opera lover to find this riveting. The whole is tied together with outstanding cinematography to capture the specatacle for the small screen.
The music has a western orchestra at its core but with numerous additional instruments, stones, wheels, bells, strange bowed things full of sloshing water and so on.
As opera in the most straightforward sense the laurels must go Placido Domingo, who wields unbearable gravitas over the whole proceedings, Paul Groves as the composer of the anthem, but above all to Elizabeth Futral who takes the part of the Princess, and who in addition to presenting a spine-tingling vocal performance has also incorporated the hand gestures of classical Chinese opera to absolutely mesmerising effect.
It would appear that a side effect of the release of this opera is that some of his other disks have been re-released which were becoming rare and expensive.
One has to predict that this will become a 21st Century classic and a vivid symbol of the thaw we are witnessing in the long centuries of China's cultural isolation.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Potentially great but flawed by poor and largely irrelevant first act, 4 Mar 2009
Tan Dun - The First Emperor [DVD] [2006]
The Second Act of First Emperor by Tan dun contains virtually all the plot and drama, and with the addition of about an extra quarter of an hour to fill in the back story we would have an absolutely great opera with an outstanding synthesis of Chinese and Western music.
In the Second Act the high production values shine through, with Domingo as the First Emperor and Elizabeth Futral as his daughter identifying completely with their roles, and singing the difficult music superbly.
However the first Act is a disaster, a flimsy back story is endlessly protracted, the libretto seems the work of a different writer, and the writing is very poor indeed. Domingo and Futral who excel in Act 2 seem unable to identify with their music and roles, and I am not surprised.
Also the extravagant resources needed in Act 1 probably mean there will be very few productions.
The MET obviously invested a lot of resources and money into this project, and in terms of production succeed brilliantly. Also the orchestra had a very difficult time assimilating Chinese characteristics, and the inclusion of traditional Chinese instruments is fascinating, although this occurs mainly in the successful Act 2.
As this seems to have been a joint project between the Met and the composer Tan Dun from inception, I believe the MET should have brought its world class expertise to resolve the Act 1 problems.
If it were possible I would award 1 star for Act 1 and 5 stars for Act 2.
As Act 2 it is virtually the complete opera.I would recommend anyone interested to watch this.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
High Definition downscaled, 15 Sep 2009
Absolutely impressive opera by Tan Dun!
Placido Domingo in an unusual, really interesting role.
(I was so happy to visit one of the MET performances in NY.)
But, the English language does not really fit the Chinese music.
(Just for comparison remember the impression to listen to Verdi sung in English or German!)
Completely inacceptable is the fact that EMI has published (nearly a year ago) a whole series "MET live in HD" just on DVD, but so far not a single BD!
Dear EMI! I did not buy the BD-player just to enjoy it's upscaling function, but not really to reach HD quality.
For something like this DVD is really yesterday's technology.
And if you do not publish HD today, within a few years it also will be yesterday's snow. Then we have 4K/ 8K in 3D and Full HD has to be upscaled. (Even Full HD is just nothing comperad to be in the opera house.)
Please, additionally do publish the "Paeony Pavillion" on BD. This is sung in original language. During the past years we had several broadcasts on public and pay TV channels (mainly in poor shifted letterbox quality), but not a single publication on DVD/ BD. Do you want to have private copies "circulating" all the time?
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