Saw another live from the Met screening this morning, this one being The First Emperor, a brand new opera composed by Tan Dun - who also composed the music for the movie Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, as the Met kept reminding us (this was the 'popular' connection, to draw people in I suppose). Locally, Tan Dun's music has also been at Walt Disney Concert Hall in the form of a Paper Concerto: long strips of paper were hung from the ceiling and rattled and banged to create a very nifty kind of percussion concerto.
I drove all the way out to Valencia to see this screening, since every theater nearer to me had sold out by the time I got my act together to buy tickets. You see, the premiere of The First Emperor a few weeks ago in New York was greeted with pretty awful reviews, and I was wary of going. But since last weekend's Met screening of Puritani was so much fun, I was itching to see another live broadcast: out to Valencia it was then. The drive to Valencia actually wasn't so bad - a fun adventure to a new (to me) part of LA metro, with a relaxing, no-traffic freeway ride to boot.
The age range at today's screening was considerably more balanced than it was last week (remember, a mostly older folks audience last week). Today, I had a lovely conversation with a CSU Long Beach student sitting next to me who apparently also frequents the LA Opera. And the whole screening experience was much more efficient and smooth at this Edwards chain theater than it was out in Alhambra; we were quickly let in from the freezing, windy cold before the line outside got too long, and everyone inside seemed to be ready for us to be there. We filed in and had our grand old time
The opera wasn't so fantastic. There were some really nice moments - the orchestra created these gorgeous soundscapes in Act 1 (the overture, the first big song for the emperor - sung by Placido Domingo - as he descends a giant staircase), and the underscoring was fabulously moody and atmospheric.
But the libretto and the structuring of the drama itself sat very awkwardly on top of the score; decidedly ugly and unpoetic English-language words made songs stilted and unintentionally funny, and the plot was so convoluted that it was hard to keep track of what was really going on. Take the final scene: a narrator type character screams out, with some air of authority, "X has been strangled by Y and is dead!" The on-stage personnel react accordingly with shock and sadness. But then the ghost of X immediately appears and goes "Actually, Y didn't kill me. I killed myself!" A puzzling contradiction - why have the narrator say one thing, only to uselessly change the story's mind and have it go in another direction: and not just once, but twice! And takes a good 10 minutes for each of these change-of-hearts to play out.
The intermission features today were actually more interesting than the opera. Even though we had just witnessed Act 1 and had seen that the show didn't quite play out as beautifully as one had hoped, it was nevertheless interesting to watch creative team put the whole thing together. Footage from orchestra rehearsals was particularly interesting - as I said earlier, the orchestral sound was the best part of the whole piece. Tan Dun stood at the podium and walked the very Western orchestra through the intricacies of the Chinese sound that he had written into the score. It was fascinating to see the orchestra pick it up on the second or third try.
A hilarious moment occured in the live interview: Beverly Sills was interviewing Placido Domingo and got around to talking about David Beckham - she was saying how Domingo has been singing for so long, outlasting so many trends including how now David Beckham is coming to America. She blurted out that David Beckham was coming over to the United States to play... hockey! Well okay, nice try to connect opera with current events, Beverly, but he's actually a soccer player. Placido corrected her, of course, but still - it was kind of an embarrassing gaffe to make. The whole broadcast was trying to connect the public at large to the perceived-as-staid opera world, and the host shows her major disconnection with the major public. Sure, an honest mistake, but nevertheless pretty funny.
The performances were all of pretty high quality. Placido Domingo as the titular emperor was in fine voice, but he looked very physically tired throughout the entire opera. He's very old for an opera singer now, and though he was able to navigate the stairs and steps on the set okay, you could clearly see his age (he kept forgetting words, too - you could hear the prompter giving him his lines from off-stage). Elizabeth Frutal, as the emperor's daughter, sang very well and acted the part to the fullest extent; it looked like she was having a lot of fun really getting into those Chinese-esque movements created by choreographer Dou Dou Huang.
And the set: gorgeous and enormous. Designed by Fan Yu, it consisted of an enormous staircase that spanned the width of the stage, going from nearly the front and extending upwards to the immense back wall. It was a transparent riser of sorts - when lit from beneath it revealed scenery and sometimes other singers and dancers, too. On top of the staircase, hanging from around 300 ropes (said the tech director during the intermission feature), were stone blocks that raised up and down to create different scenes. With the colorful costumes and enormous chorus, the show was quite the spectacle for the eyes.
The credits say that this is a co-production with the Los Angeles Opera. Does this mean we'll be seeing this gi-normous production at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion next year? Perhaps... I don't know if I'll be going to see it live though. Don't know if I could sit through the thing again. I was glad I went and saw this - it's interesting to see any new operas, just to see how contemporary composers are thinking about this art form that seems live off its old staples. Even though this one wasn't so interesting, it was a nice shot.
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