Another Brick in the Wall: The Opera
Another Brick in the Wall: The Opera is an opera by composer and librettist Roger Waters, based on the concept album The Wall by the progressive rock band Pink Floyd, of which Waters is a founding member. It premiered at Opéra de Montréal in March 2017, and was produced by Cincinnati Opera in July 2018.
History
Pierre Dufour, former general director of Opéra de Montréal, wrote to Pink Floyd co-founder and songwriter Roger Waters about the idea of an opera based on the Pink Floyd concept album The Wall. Waters said that he replied to Dufour with a "rather pompous" letter which claimed that any conversion of rock music into orchestral music always became an "unmitigated disaster". However, the production team sent Waters computer-generated renditions of a few of composer Julien Bilodeau's pieces from the opera, and Waters was convinced to join and support the production as the librettist. Waters said he was "very moved" by the music and went into the project with "great enthusiasm". The opera premiered at Opéra de Montréal as part of the city of Montréal's 375th-anniversary celebration. Due to unprecedented sales, the Opéra de Montréal added three performances of the opera on top of the initial seven performances.Synopsis
The opera's plot is taken directly from the 1982 movie Pink Floyd – The Wall. A musician named Pink reflects on his lonely childhood through a swirl of flashbacks and chemically induced hallucinations. He watches as he constructs a symbolic wall around his life to cope with the death of his father, his overbearing mother, his depression, his drug addiction, and other emotional experiences. As he ages, his madness intensifies, and he hallucinates himself as a dictator and his concert audience as a neo-Nazi rally. This hallucination drives him to imagine a judge ruling him innocent, setting him free, and ordering the wall to be taken down.Music and instrumentation
In Another Brick in the Wall: The Opera, composer Julien Bilodeau shapes and builds upon the original music of Pink Floyd's album The Wall. While the album's lyrics, songs, and song order are maintained, Pink Floyd's original musical themes are extended by orchestral variations and interludes within the opera.According to Cincinnati Opera's artistic director Evans Mirageas, Another Brick in the Wall is not a rock opera, but rather a standard opera, scored for eight soloists, 48 chorus members, and a 70-piece orchestra.