Tan Dun’s The First Emperor and the Expectations of Exoticism

Thrice upon a time . . .

First, an experiment: three approaches to the questions raised by Tan Dun’s The First Emperor.

The First Emperor, by Chinese-American composer Tan Dun, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera House in December 2006. A commission from the Met and a co-production with the Los Angeles Opera, the opera included an enormous cast and massive sets. The First Emperor of the title is the real-life Qin Shi Huang, whose history and mythology is befitting of a grandiose production even millennia later: Emperor Qin ruled from 220 to 210 BCE; he embarked upon large-scale projects, including the Great Wall, that were thought to unite China during a time of unrest. Known for his brutal force on small and large scales, Emperor Qin was buried with his army of terracotta soldiers.

The opera opens with the Yin-Yang master, who invites the audience into a tale of long ago. The Yin-Yang master sings in Peking opera style and is dressed accordingly. Soon, the Emperor enters with his wife and daughter and his entourage, including the General. The Emperor Qin commands the General to find Gao Jianli—a childhood friend of the Emperor who he wants to write the anthem for a new and united China. When Gao Jianli is found and brought to the Emperor, his resistance to this task is palpable—after all, the Emperor has ordered the pillaging of his home village among many others and has caused large-scale destruction and displacement.

The Emperor’s daughter, Yueyang, who is bethrothed to the General, seduces Gao Jianli in the process of trying to convince him to write the anthem. Their night of passion ends with a miraculous end to her paralysis; she is, almost magically, able to walk for the first time. The Emperor is torn between his anger at Gao Jianli for the transgression against his daughter and desire for the anthem. When the Emperor demands that his daughter marry the General as planned, she refuses and threatens to kill herself. Eventually he schemes with Jianli to let her go temporarily, as he believes the General will be killed in battle after which they could once again be together. In the final scene of the opera, the ghost of Yueyang returns: she has committed suicide rather than marry the General. The General is also dead, having been poisoned by Jianli. His ghost warns the Emperor to beware of Jianli and his potential revenge. Jianli appears, hysterical with grief over Yueyang’s death. He bites off his own tongue, and the Emperor kills him quickly to spare his suffering. In the last moments, the Emperor finally hears the anthem: it is the slave song, Jianli’s ultimate revenge.

Seen through the lens of musical representation, the opera presents a paradox of authenticity and exoticism (highlighted by the presence of the Peking opera singer juxtaposed with imagined sounds of ancient China), inviting a reading of eclectic aesthetics through history and identity politics. The actual historical reach of the opera is not only an interesting choice of subject, but, I will suggest, a critical piece of how the opera might be situated—easily and more problematically—in discourses of exoticism and transnational cultural production.

The First Emperor was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. Tan Dun, a Columbia-educated composer of opera, film, and orchestral music, wrote the score, and the libretto was penned by a Boston University faculty member, the novelist Ha Jin. The role of the First Emperor was sung by Placido Domingo, lending the new work and its elaborate production a kind of credibility that only someone of his career and stature could do. It was more than merely tempting to conflate Domingo with his role, seeing him as an Emperor of Opera.

Having Domingo in the title role—especially of a new work by a hyphenated composer (i.e., Chinese-American)—made clear The First Emperor’s debts to canonical operatic history. As W. Anthony Sheppard has argued through the concept of tinte, very loosely understood as musical style, Tan owes much to Puccini’s...