Tellingly, that’s the one with the most classical influences. As a teenager, he became a big prog-rock and Floyd fan, though his favorite album by Waters’ band remains Atom Heart Mother. “Besides, in its rock form, The Wall is perfect as it is.”īilodeau, who was 5 years old when Pink Floyd’s album came out, knew The Wall from his father’s collection. “You can’t simply transpose from one world to the other,” he said. In that vein, Bilodeau wanted to approach The Wall in a way that wouldn’t just refresh Waters’ original music with fancy orchestrations. Back in 2011, Bilodeau created a musical piece, meant to evoke Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, for the opening of a new hall in town, the Maison Symphonique de Montreal. debut at the Cincinnati Opera House, after which it will likely travel to more American cities.ĭufour tapped Bilodeau, a well-known Canadian classical composer, to tackle the project because the musician had already proved he could transform a fabulously famous work into something original.
Then, in July, the opera will make its U.S. In the process, it will be seen by nearly 30,000 people. The production, originally set to run for seven nights in town, will, at its conclusion on March 27, set a record for the Montreal Opera, playing for 10 nights at Palace Des Arts. The financial side of that equation already seems to be paying off. More, the hook of Montreal’s anniversary this year promised the kind of publicity, and funding, an ambitious project like a new Wall would require. As fraught as that connection may be, it has become a perverse point of pride for Quebec’s huge prog rock fan-base. Forty years ago, at a Pink Floyd concert in Montreal, Waters suffered a mental breakdown which, two years later, wound up inspiring the band’s double album touchstone.
The city had a key role in the creation of The Wall. The idea for the project germinated back in 2014 when the general director of Opera De Montreal, Pierre Dufour, got the notion to reinvent Pink Floyd’s classic album as a toast to the 375th anniversary of Montreal becoming a French settlement. Combined with the elaborate staging of the show by Dominic Champagne, the piece ends up far closer to Verdi than Van Halen. I have admiration, too, for Bilodeau’s decision to rip all the rock out of The Wall, so he could re-erect it with a 70-piece orchestra, a 46-member choir, and eight solo singers. “It’s not a comedy,” Bilodeau deadpanned.
I had far more positive feelings about the work, especially given the fact that, from its inception, The Wall used “sullen” characters, and “gloomy” world views, as its selling point.