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COPYRIGHT 2007 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
Scenes of the Near and Far East have unfolded thousands of times on the Metropolitan Opera stage, courtesy of "Madama Butterfly," "Turandot," "Aida," and other masterpieces of Orientalism. This season, with the premiere performances of Tan Dun's "The First Emperor," the company is finally letting a non-Western composer describe his world. Tan grew up in a village in the Hunan province of China, during the Cultural Revolution. He knew nothing of Western music until his late teens, receiving a musical education from rural folk songs, the chanting of Taoist monks, and Peking opera, whose techniques he absorbed while playing fiddle in a provincial troupe. He came to New York in 1986, having been introduced to Schoenberg and other twentieth-century composers at the Central Conservatory, in Beijing. He rapidly established himself as the most energetic Chinese composer of his generation. His first opera, "Nine Songs," had its premiere at Pace University, in 1989; his second, "Marco Polo," played at New York City Opera, in 1997. Now he is conducting his latest opera at the Met--the first composer to do so since Italo Montemezzi led "L'Amore dei Tre Re," in 1941.
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