Renowned Chinese composer Tan Dun is busy preparing for his new piece, First Emperor of China, at the invitation of the Metropolitan Opera of New York.

Tan made the speech after a news briefing in Shanghai yesterday, confirming that Placido Domingo, one of the top three tenors in the world, had agreed to act the hero, Emperor Qin Shihuang, in the opera, and Chinese director Zhang Yimou, on the other hand, would very much likely serve as a director of an opera for the very first time.

Tan said he has perfected the draft of the script and was moving on to the composing part.

The composer, who won the best soundtrack at the Academy for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in 2001, was recently crowned "The Best Composer of the Year (2003)" by the authoritative American Musician Guild.

With a bloated ambition, the genius is also dreaming of presenting a play on the Great Wall of China. "First Emperor of China should be presented somewhere in China, and I suppose the Great Wall would be the best site," Tan said, hinting that he would get down to the troupe's tour to China after its New York debut.

Emperor Qin will be an epic historical telling the ups and downs of the first Chinese emperor who united the country by force and started China's feudal era, which lasted for more than 2,000 years, perhaps the longest in the world.

Part of the stories have already been well-known to the world through famous director Zhang Yimou's latest film Hero and Chen Kaige's The Emperor and The Assassin, both about the failed assassin plot against the emperor. The first film was one of the Oscar nominees in the best foreign film sector this year, while the second was selected for competition in Cannes in 1999.

Tan said his cooperation with director Zhang also started last year, when he was selected to be the composer for the original sound tracks for Hero by Zhang Yimou.

The exact show time of the opera in New York and on the Great Wall is yet to be disclosed.

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