From around the world: Tokyo. (International).(Opera Review)

Suntory Hall, named for the Japanese whiskey-maker, celebrated another beverage last October with Tea, a new opera by Tan Dun, commissioned for the hall's concert-opera series. A coproduction with Shanghai Grand Theatre (which held workshops late last summer) and Netherlands Opera (which staged a full production in January 2003), Tea celebrates a distinctly Chinese product that has gone global, rather like the composer himself.

Yet Tea has about as much to do with tea as Marco Polo, Tans previous opera, has to do with Marco Polo. Each topic serves merely as a point of departure for the composer's sometimes far-flung cross-cultural ruminations. Tea opens with a Japanese tea ceremony with the monk Seiko (baritone Haijing Fu) savoring an empty cup. His personal emptiness traces back ten years, to his request of the Chinese Emperor (bass Stephen Richardson) to marry Princess Lan (soprano Nancy Allen Lundy), which resulted in a blood rivalry with the Prince (tenor Christopher Gillett) over the authenticity of the Prince's copy of The Book of Tea, the classic text written by the sage Lu Yu, with whom Seiko had studied. The search for the real text ends just after the sage's death, when his daughter Lu (mezzo-soprano Ning Liang) releases it to Seiko and Lan, with the provision that they spread its wisdom to the world. The Prince's obsession, however, brings the conflict to a tragic conclusion.

Tan and co-librettist Xu Ying, resident playwright of China National Theatre, fashioned culturally disparate tales into a loose-leaf narrative that benefited greatly from Pierre Audi's minimal staging, which (unlike Martha Clarke's for Marco Polo) actually shows some familiarity with the material. The singing, in English with Japanese tides, boasted both a fine chorus of chanting monks and a fairly well-matched cast, with Gillett the only weak link.

Tea's true success, though, lay in Tans music, an ever-extending sonic palette that, without constant vigilance, could easily descend into parody. The NHK Symphony Orchestra, placed stage left, proved perfectly responsive both to Tans score and to his presence on the podium, particularly when musicians were required to vocalize or to animate the music.

The latter burden fell on the shoulders of three ...