The first fitting of “The First Emperor’s” new clothes was outsourced from New York to China last month in an unusual workshop for the most expensive and complex opera the Metropolitan Opera has ever commissioned…

As the music rose from the orchestra, alternately heroic, lyrical and haunting, Mr. Tan’s shoulders seemed to relax. Voices wove through the gongs, the bass flute and the plucked strings of ancient instruments as well as the orchestra’s standard violins and cellos, woodwinds and brasses.