Tan Dun: Marco Polo

Tan Dun is uniquely qualified to compose a multi-cultural opera, a world music composition. Marco Polo’s actual journey covered lands and water and cultures. Dun imagines the structure of the opera as a top spiritual layer of the seasons, a physical journey layer, and a musical layer that encompassed middle eastern, Indian, and Tibetan cultures—up to 16 varieties. This was Dun’s first operatic composition, his PhD thesis, with a 1995 premiere. The most recent performance was recorded in Amsterdam, November 2008; by that time he had been awarded an Oscar and a Grammy for the music and dance sequences in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Most of the music is written in a western avant-garde style even when suggesting other sources such as Himalayan. Chinese music and instrumentation reflects Peking Opera traditions. Marco Polo comes close to the original 16th Century (or classical) ideal of a work that gives equal emphasis to art, dance, music, and poetry. There is no “story”; there are events, as the two characters Marco (the Traveler) and Polo (the Memory of the Journey) re-experience their journey to and through the Far East. Colorful staging is achieved with simple costumes made of bold contrasting colors and metallic cloth. Dun attempts to surprise his audience with single Asian instruments enmeshed in a western orchestra. A few stage accounts are selected from the journey, such as the Himalayas that fracture as they attempt to cross. This is a liberated approach to opera that may appeal to any music lover. Comparing DVD and Blu-Ray, the video looks the same at first, but a closer look reveals duller color on the SD. The sharpness of the image looks the same. The audio sounds the same, but on extended listening the SD does not have the same depth and complex musical detail. I was surprised at how small the difference was.

Price: $57.98

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