Talk:A Night at the Opera (Queen album)

Inconsistency on Bohemian Rhapsody release date?

from the article:

1976	"Bohemian Rhapsody"	Pop Singles	9

and

"Bohemian Rhapsody"/"I'm In Love With My Car" - Elektra E45297; released December, 1975

If these are US and UK release daates perhaps this should be made clearer..

NPOV?

Freddies piano solo on "Death on..." is described as "wonderful" Not exactly NPOV :p Grymsqueaker

"There are some very nice backing vocals by Freddie as well as very high and fairly low harmonies by Roger, and some falsettos by Brian." doesn't seem to be very NPOV either... humanoidboogie

Queen prog or not?

...as they say... No Synthesisers! (Just massive overdubbing.) I would not call it prog. --Fantailfan 12:11, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I definentally think it's progressive. They made progress with the rock sound and did not even used synths. Synths is not really needed for music to be progressive.

NPOV cleanup

Article edited as part of work on the NPOV backlog. Since the article now seems to be improved and there is no further discussion here, the tag is removed. If you disagree with this, please re-tag the article with {{NPOV}} and post to Talk. -- Steve Hart 22:39, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No pauses?

Re this quote:

"There are no pauses between the songs. This gives the album as a whole a collage effect. The songs seem to play continuously without stopping in between."

Is this just the original vinyl version? Both the remastered casette and CD versions definitely have pauses between the tracks, except between "The Prophets' Song" and "Love of my life". Can anyone provide any back-up for this? Stejsmith 06:57, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rock opera?!

Okay, if this is a rock opera, I dare you to work out the plot. Twin Bird 02:45, 22 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, I like dares. A man kills a guy on a Saturday night(Death On Two Legs), followed by lazing around on a Sunday afternoon(Lazying On A Sunday Afternoon). He then decides to go for a ride in his car(I'm In Love With My Car) where he drives to his girl friends house(You're My Best Friend). The two drive on the countryside, in the good ol' year of '39('39). They go dancing(Sweet Lady), and afterwards to a dock where they are taking a boat ride(Seaside Rendezvous). While out on the water, the police capture the man, and take him to prison, where he awaits his sentence(Prophets Song). The man, who knows he is guilty, shows his effections to the woman(Love Of My Life) before remenising on his past(Good Company). He is then sent into the trial, crying to his momma, and regreting his bad mistakes. But lifes choices have conciquences and he is excicuted and the last line, Any Way The Wind Blows(Bohemian Rhapsody). God Save The Queen is just there to make it cooler!(forgive my spelling) BS 0013

You made that up on the spot, didn't you? :)

Twin Bird, it's not rock opera in the sense that Tommy, The Wall or American Idiot are rock opera, but rather a rock 'n' roll homage to opera. Some of the songs do have very operatic themes, and many of them have their own self contained plots:

Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon tells the story of a week in the life of a purportedly "ordinary guy" (although he doesn't appear to be terribly ordinary!).
'39 is the story of a group of volunteer space travellers in the unspecified year of [something]39 who return to Earth to find that, due to time dilation, 100 years have passed and everyone they knew is dead, except for the singer's daughter, who looks like her mother. The volunteers despair and leave Earth together for "a new home".
The Prophet's Song tells the story of a disconcerting seer who tells everyone of his apocalyptic vision of God, and gives a warning to all mankind. One listener jeers that the prophet is mad, breaking the spell, but the singer is unnerved by what he has heard, and is still unable to "laugh at the madman".
Good Company is a whole life story for the singer. As a child, the singer's father, an old man puffing a pipe, advises him to "take care of what you've got" and "keep good company". He grows up happily, surrounded by close friends, and marries Sally J, "the girl from Number 4". As they grow closer together, however, he loses all his friends. He begins to devote his life to his work, working longer and longer hours, and ends up running his own Limited Company. This comes at the expense of his marriage, and he hardly notices when his wife leaves him. At the end of the song, the singer is an old man, puffing his pipe. He is alone and friendless, and advises the listener to "take care of those you call your own and keep good company".
Bohemian Rhapsody is mock opera in its own right. The story is not really clear, but seems to be along the following lines: It opens with some musings on the nature of fantasy and reality. The singer, a "poor boy" who needs "no sympathy" explains that nothing matters to him because he is "easy come, easy go". Then (possibly after time has passed) he confesses to his "mama" that he has shot a man, and bemoans having thrown away his life so soon. He is scared of dying, but feels he must "face the truth". What follows (the really operatic bit) is a strange vision of thunder and lightning, with dancing and appearences by Gallileo, Scaramouche and Figaro. The terrified singer pleads that he is "just a poor boy". Supernatural forces begin to struggle for his soul, with God's name invoked, and references to Beelzebub setting a devil aside for the singer. The singer becomes defiant, and attempts his escape. There doesn't appear to be any conclusion to the story, which just ends back at the start, with the singer once again expressing the sentiment that "Nothing really matters to me. Any way the wind blows..."

So you see, a lot of the songs could quite reasonably be considered rock opera, but the album itself does not have an underlying story (in fact the songs were often written independantly without reference to one another). The question is now whether the album itself is "rock opera". I think not, but I'm not the one who's been applying these genre classifications to the albums on these articles. RobbieG 12:25, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Surely there can be no doubt this is not a Rock Opera. It only appeared on that radar due to the title of the album. MrMarmite 10:31, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Prophet's Song

Not sure if this is necessarily true, but it seems pretty obvious from what I've heard of the song: The Prophet's song was written about May's dream of The Great Flood (or the story of Noah, hence the dove). I've read this somewhere, but I can't remember where, but it makes sense. I'm pretty sure, but not sure enough to write it in. MaddenedMan 09:06, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong

"The title was apparently chosen because if the tracks on Queen's original studio albums are numbered in sequential order starting with their first, this would be the 39th song in the sequence."

The band denies this on their website. They say the fact that it was their 39th studio song was merely a coincidence they noticed after the album had been released.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.82.35.51 (talk • contribs).

Name

Shouldn't it be "A Night At The Opera" the way it's written on the album cover? 84.108.245.222 18:09, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]