Tan Dun, whose first opera, Marco Polo, delved into the enduring mystique of early exploration, approaches another unlikely source: Lu Yu’s classic Book of Tea, less a cookbook than a codification of Tang Dynasty philosophy and aesthetics. Similarly, Tea has about as much to do with tea as Marco Polo had to do with Marco Polo, each merely serving as a point of departure for the composer’s often far-flung ruminations on the spirituality of cultural exchange.

The loose-leaf narrative opens with a Japanese tea ceremony, the high monk Seikyo savouring an empty cup that mirrors his own personal emptiness. A decade earlier, Seikyo had asked the Chinese Emperor for permission to marry Princess Lan but, after questioning the authenticity of a copy of Lu Yu’s classic text jealously guarded by the Prince, finds himself involved in a family blood feud. The search for the real text ends just after the tea sage’s death, when his daughter Lu releases it to Seikyo and Lan with the provision that they spread its wisdom to the world.

On one hand, Tea is a triumph of collaboration, right from Tan’s allusive libretto, ‘co-written’ with China National Theatre resident playwright Xu Ying and ‘edited’ by veteran translator Diana Liao (would that the text to Marco Polo had received such care!). Though ostensibly billed as a concert opera at its premiere, director Pierre Audi’s minimal staging is effective in its restraint and Angelo Figus’s striking costumes are a backdrop unto themselves. On video, the camera actually enhances the effect, moving assuredly among the characters and select orchestral musicians. Occasionally the scene pulls back to reveal that set designer Jean Kalman’s simple walkway of overlapping wooden planks actually forms the linguistic character ‘ru’ (‘enter’), a poignant multilingual frame for scenes involving either love or death.

Tea’s real accomplishment, however, comes in the music. Compared with Marco Polo, the vocal writing is in another league entirely, relying on neither Peking Opera references nor extended Western techniques but instead harking back to almost bel canto-like lyricism. The orchestral language, on the other hand, fits entirely within Tan’s expanding palette of elemental sounds: water is dripped, poured and splashed; paper crumpled, torn and malleted (on floor-to-ceiling sheets); ceramic tinkling falls somewhere between ancient Chinese bells and Indonesian gamelan without disrupting Western tuning.

Without constant vigilance all this can easily descend into parody, but under the NHK Symphony Orchestra – and most notably percussionists Haruka Fujii, Tamao Inano and Yumi Fukushima – the ritual remains confidently effective. In his earlier Concerto for Water Percussion and the Water Passion after St Matthew, Tan’s playful experimentation had already attained a certain emotional resonance. In Tea, those techniques have essentially evolved into non-pitched leitmotifs, with stones emitting a feeling of fate, paper a smooth sensuality, and water an ominous message of birth and rebirth.

For the uninitiated this all may sound impulsive, but Tea has obviously been brewing a long time. With its Asian elements thoroughly infused, it celebrates a distinctly Chinese product that has gone decidedly global – rather like the composer himself.