List Price: $37.98You Pay Only: $33.99 You Save: $3.99 (11%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 5099921512995
Format: Classical, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Label: EMI Classics
Manufacturer: EMI Classics
Number Of Discs: 2
Number Of Items: 2
Publisher: EMI Classics
Release Date: September 16, 2008
Running Time: 176 minutes
Sales Rank: 15072
Studio: EMI Classics
Theatrical Release Date: 2006
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Product Description:
The Metropolitan Opera's acclaimed Live in High-Definition series, which projects live performances into theaters across the globe, has met with unprecedented critical and commercial success and has made opera convenient and affordable to millions of viewers worldwide. Now, EMI Classics is proud to collaborate with The Met to release 6 new DVDs made from these broadcast performances.
Legendary tenor Plácido Domingo leads an all-star cast in this visually stunning opera by Academy Award-winning composer Tan Dun (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon). Commissioned by The Met in the mid-1990s, this spectacular new production was one of the most highly-anticipated cultural events of the 2006-07 Metropolitan Opera season, combining the expressive power of traditional ancient Chinese singing with the long musical lines of Italian Opera. Conducted by Tan Dun himself, with revered Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou (Hero, Raise the Red Lantern) directing and Oscar-winner Emi Wada designing the costumes. A remarkable performance!
Amazon.com:
The First Emperor is one of those spectacular MET stagings, bursting with colorful costumes and striking sets in noted film director Zhang Yimou’s production. It’s been billed as a 'global opera' in its mixture of traditional Chinese and Western music written by Tan Dun, who has successfully bridged the two in his compositions, perhaps most effectively in his film music. The opera’s based on supposed incidents in the life of Qin Shi Huang, whose military conquests unified China in 221 BC. He’s credited with building a centralized state, constructing the Great Wall, codifying the laws, and standardizing weights and measures. His efficiency also extended to ruthlessly suppressing dissent and murdering scholars, which could indicate a subtext that makes him a stand-in for Mao Zedong. The libretto, by the composer and Ha Jin, largely conforms to Western epic opera traditions, revolving around the tribulations of an ambitious power-seeker, his daughter’s love for the composer Jianli, and the Emperor’s desire for her to marry a general for political reasons. The bloody ending involves the death of the three members of the love triangle and the Emperor’s ascension to the throne where he hears the anthem composed for the occasion by Jianli, which turns out to be the song of the slaves building the Great Wall.
The opera opens with a promising scene based on traditional Chinese music and employing traditional instruments to great effect. A narrator, the Yin-Yang Master, sensationally done by the Peking Opera performer Wu Hsing-Kuo, outlines the story we are about to see in a striking mixture of singing, dancing, and acrobatics against a backdrop of Chinese drummers and a chorus. After that, the principals enter and the music becomes predominately western with the Chinese instruments relegated to marginal exotica. The singers are forced to struggle with a libretto that seems unsingable, words resisting the melodies to which they’re set. Set piece arias are predominately slow, accentuating the static effect of the staging in most of the scenes. As the Emperor, Placido Domingo, more baritonal than usual, often sounds strained but retains his stage presence. As his daughter, soprano Elizbeth Futral sings very well indeed, especially given the ungrateful material she’s given. Tenor Paul Graves sings her lover, the composer Jianli. He’s perhaps the most effective cast member, singing with color and firm tone. His rival for the princess, General Wang, is well sung by Hao Jiang Tian, and the excellent mezzo, Michelle DeYoung is a suitably scary Shaman, costumed like a Halloween witch, super-long fingernails to the fore. Tan Dun conducts the MET orchestra, whose music is fairly tepid when the assisting Chinese instruments fall silent. The enthusiastic reception of the audience at the end of this 2007 performance suggests that the opera, or at least the production, is a crowd pleaser. Home theatre audiences will welcome the blaze of colors and innovative production details, in a contemporary opera featuring some fine singers. --Dan Davis
The First Emperor is an all-regions disc in 16:9 ratio. Sound options include PCM Stereo and DTS 5.1 Surround. Sung in English, subtitles include English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Extras include a brief introduction by Zhang Ziyi, a Beverly Sills interview of Placido Domingo, and a 20-minute rehearsal film.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - the first emperor by tan dun
This opera is by far the best of all tan dun works. The costumes by designer Emi Wada are are unbelieveable beautifull. Placido Domingo as the first emperor Qin was full and strong that is missing from his other recordings, it must be the help he got with working under Tan Dun. The whole opera will be my best in my very large collection. RYTA SMITH
Rating: - Interesting visual spectacle but musically bizarre...
This is an amazing stage and costume spectacle with highly unusual music that is sometimes pleasing and other times jarring. It is certainly different. Tan Dun even gave the orchestra vocal parts!
The overly simplistic story line and lyrics of the opera, however, were no match for the luscious spectacle enveloping the music and singing. Elizabeth Futral, for example, did a wonderful acting job as the princess with Eastern mannerisms but the English vocal lines she expressed were often just plain bizarre. Paul Groves' part as the protagonist Fianli was just as strange. At times I wondered how he could keep a straight face. It was all just too simple...for the setting...or even to be an opera! (This is another example of the disappointment of hearing the Latin mass sung in English!)
So, it seems kind of unfair to criticize anyone's part in it. A great singer like Placido Domingo cannot give more than the composer writes. It's hardly his fault if it doesn't fly! Same for the rest of the cast.
I'm glad I saw this production, but I have no desire to ever watch it again.
Rating:  - Nothing much to be proud of...
At the start of the show, actress ZHANG Ziyi, attired in a curious 'aerodrome look', said that she is 'proud of this production of The First Emperor'.
I regret to say that I cannot quite agree with her.
Despite the decade of hard work spent on the musical script by TAN Dun, I regret to say that Mr. Tan has chosen the wrong libretto for the opera: the story plot based on an earlier lakclustre Chinese film 'Qin Song' starring the sublime JIANG Wen as the First Emperor and XU Qing as Princess Yueyang. The story isn't original, nor historical. Much more drama could be gained into the plot if TAN had resorted to the historical 'assassin' Jingke, reputedly the 'father of the Kamikazes' of Japan. Historically GAO Jianli composed the famous 'air' called 'The River Yi Shudders' for the great assassin Jingke before he embarked on his heroic act in attempting to kill the First Emperor (unsuccessfully, with Jingke himself dying as a result). What beauty and dramatic impact could there be if this was staged in operatic format?
TAN embarked instead on the colourless film story for his libretto. Worse still, the lyrics were to every singer's and listener's horror. If opera is an art embodying music, singing, poetry and drama, at least there is scarcity in the last two. The lyrics are horrific in that they are prosaic and verbose. There simply is no connection between the words and the musical line. What more could be more lacklustre than a phrase like 'your horses tramppled my mother...to death'? ... Read More
Rating:  - Don't listen to the critics
Critics have been very harsh on this new opera. This has happened before; composers have been misunderstood or not-understood at all by critics, while the public loved them. Seems too early to dismiss "The First Emperor". I have seen it many times and every time I discover something new. The DVD is much better than the live broadcast I saw in the theater, the image is much brighter.
The opera is full of symbols. I am sure I don't even understand them all yet. Although the obvious theme is about the anthem, seems that the suffering of the builders of the Great Wall is a much more profound one. The wall is built to protect against the barbarians, while behaving in a barbaric way. Is this opera a critic to Mao (and/or others)?
The music is different, interesting and enjoyable. The singers are first quality and the Chinese performers very interesting. This production is the first one. May be it is not perfect, or it could have been done differently. I will leave that judgment for the future, when new performances are produced. Seems to me that a film production could be interesting, (like Chaudet's film of Stravinsky's "Le Rossignol").
I strongly recommend this DVD to those interested in the new world, not only of Opera, but the global village and China's cultural integration with the world in particular.
Rating: - Disappointing!
The last time I heard Placido Domingo, it was live in Handel's 'Tamerlano' in Washington DC, just a few months ago. Domingo was singing a baroque role well outside his comfort zone of technique, but his voice and his stage presence were so commanding that I loved him anyway. The last time I saw Domingo in a Chinese robe, it was in the DVD of the Met's 'Turandot.' He was superb, both vocally and dramatically. In this performance, alas, his voice is harsh and strained, and he stumbles about like a sick old man, not at all the persona of the great Qin Emperor. Even at his greatest, however, Domingo couldn't have made sense of this role. The character is implausibly foolish and the music assigned to the role has no gamut of expressiveness.
I expected good things from Placido and also from composer Tan Dun, whose less grandiose opera "Tea" impressed me a lot. That older work synthesized Chinese traditions of 'natural' noise as musical material with European concepts of horizontal structure in time -- impression with memory, you might say. This First Emperor is just a mish-mash of symphonic bombast with orientalizing sound effects. Tan Dun could write better movie music! in fact he has -- the music for Hero, among other things, also portraying the Qin Emperor. If you ever have a choice between this opera and that film, take the film!
As one is accustomed to expect, the Met production is lavish. The costumes are stunning, though the robes of the two leading male singers are far from flattering ... Read More
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