It doesn't matter how this makes you feel, better just deal with it: the
next decade of opera belongs to Tan Dun.

I think that's bad news, but I am taking my own advice and won't give
in to denial.  In case you haven't had the pleasure yet, Tan's works are
interesting, dramatic, rather enjoyable - at least before patience runs
out - but here's a small point:  the gentleman eschews music, substituting
sound effects.

Why should you worry about Tan? Look at the facts:  There was "Ghost
Opera," "Marco Polo" in Edinburgh and around Europe; "Peony Pavillion,"
Tan's three-week speed-composing effort savaged by Peter Sellars at his
most excessive and least responsive to a magnificent subject; a Millennium
thing, "2000 Today," played everywhere; another quick-and-dirty (but
better, this time), with the Oscar'd soundtrack for "Crouching Lion, Hidden
Dragon"; then Helmuth Rilling's commission of "The Water Passion of St.
Matthew" for Stuttgart's Passion 2000, to have its US premiere here, at
the Oregon Bach Festival, on July 5.

More significantly, the immediate future:  an opera, "Tea," commissioned by
Suntory Hall and Netherlands Opera; "The Map," for Yo-Yo Ma and the Boston
Symphony; a commission from the Met for 2006, and more...

If "Water Passion" is indicative of the coming Tan Era, singers and
audiences are in for hard times, especially the former.  The soprano
is doing an Yma Sumac thing all the way through (Elizabeth Keusch doing
a stunning job of it in Stuttgart, without a trace of shrillness even on
G overtones on top of frequent Ds and Es), the bass is asked to imitate
Tuvan throat singers, the chorus has only sounds, shouts and pebbles for
castanets - no music to speak or even to declaim.  On the orchestra level,
out of 90 minutes, there are two phrases from Bernstein, lifted whole, and
a great deal of water dripping, churning, lapping, poured, stirred,
spritzing and blitzing.

It's raining operas and dogs... but I am repeating myself.

Janos Gereben/SF
In Oregon, to July 8
[log in to unmask]