The project has the approval of Roger Waters, Pink Floyd’s former bassist, singer and the driving creative force behind the band’s most celebrated years. But Mr Waters admits to having initial doubts. “In my experience, the marriage between rock’n’roll and any kind of symphonic form always ends in disaster,” he says, chuckling wryly. He includes his own foray in this: In 2005, Mr Waters released his own opera, “Ça Ira”, to middling reviews. “By and large it’s a really bad idea.”
One of the best-selling albums of all time, “The Wall” spawned a film and three live albums (one from the full band, and two from Mr Waters since his acrimonious split with the band). An opera is quite another proposition, though. With low expectations, Mr Waters agreed to meet with Pierre Dufour, former executive director of L'Opéra de Montréal and the mastermind of the project, Dominic Champagne, the director, and Mr Bilodeau. At the meeting, Mr Bilodeau presented demos of two drastically reimagined versions of pivotal tracks from the record: the scorching curtain-raiser “In the Flesh?” and the sneering sing-along “Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2”. Mr Waters was impressed. “By the end of the afternoon I had to change my position. ‘All right. Let’s go for it.’”
“Another Brick in the Wall” uses his original lyrics and the essential plot of “The Wall”, which traces the downfall of a rock star named Pink into madness, paranoia and eventual mutation into a fascist dictator-figure. Mr Waters, who was five months old when his father was killed in the second world war, has called the record semi-autobiographical. Mr Bilodeau notes that it is also a story of appropriately operatic dimensions. “We all have that kind of tragedy in our lives. We all have scars we carry all through our lives. It’s really a human story,” he says. Added to the drama is the fact that “the Greek heroes of our era are rock stars. They’re gods. And we’re cheering them on like animals.”
Mr Bilodeau was five when “The Wall” was released in 1979, but the fearlessness with which Pink Floyd explored diverse musical terrain has informed and inspired Mr Bilodeau’s own approach. “Another Brick in the Wall” will feature a keyboard synthesiser and myriad ambient sound-effects, nodding to a couple of the band’s sonic trademarks. “We’re going to make the same kind of sound exploration that we’re used to with Pink Floyd,” Mr Bilodeau says, but he knows where to draw the line. “I wasn’t going to put drums on it,” he notes, cringing at the thought. “I believe in it as an opera piece.”
