Rock Opera – Opera on the Rocks?
Martina Elicker, Graz
This paper provides possible definitions of the term ‘rock opera’ and places the genre in its musical, historical, and socio-cultural and -political context. Parts 1 and 2 are concerned with defining the genre and briefly discussing its main works, pointing out similar traits and characteristics of individual rock operas on both the textual/content and the musical levels. The concise case study in part 3 serves to illustrate the role of rock operas in the music production and perception in general. Together with part 4 of this paper it shows how rock operas influence, draw on, and reflect trends in society. The study further highlights the most important mechanisms at work in both the creative process of writing and performing a rock opera and its reception by critics and the public.
1. Rock Opera: A Definition
The definition of the genre ‘rock opera’ is highly relevant, as it is inextricably linked to rock opera’s reception by music critics and the public. As a genre it is hard to categorize, especially within the European tradition of distinguishing between opera, ballet, and theater1. Basically there are two ways of defining ‘rock opera’: a broad and a narrow definition, the latter of which is favored by most serious rock musicologists. The broad view places ‘rock opera’ within the field of the popular musical and sees it as a kind of extension of nineteenth-century operetta, the English ballad opera, vaudeville and music hall, revue, melodrama, minstrel, and of course opera (cf. Axton/Zehnder 8; Gammond 403). The history of the musical is loosely taken as beginning in the 1850s, “when the operettas of Offenbach, Hervé, and their successors started to provide opera-style entertainment for the masses” (Gammond 403). The rock and pop musical has its origin in the United States – only since the 1960s in England as
1 For an interesting and symptomatic discussion of the problematic distinction between opera, musical, and rock opera cf. also Clements.
300 MARTINA ELICKER well – and has therefore been traditionally associated with and mirroring cultural, political, and social aspects and particularities of the United States (cf. Axton/Zehnder 7). The more sophisticated mainstream works confirmed from the start that the musical was quite a serious matter and culturally the modern equivalent of opera. On the one hand, the works of Stephen Sondheim, for example, or entirely sung productions such as Les Misérables have reinforced this elevated status over the years; on the other hand, the rock musical (or ‘rock opera’) – as opposed to the mainstream pop musical – keeps the genre in general within the frameworks of currently popular music (cf. Gammond 403). The narrow view of ‘rock opera’ – a view I tend to favor – considers rock opera as separate from the traditional musical. Hence, rock operas are seen as song cycles in the mold of popular music concept albums (cf. Elicker 227-236), rather than as successors or sidekicks of traditional opera. Some rock operas are formally linked to oratorios and number operas (cf. Ziegenrücker/Wicke 331; Anders 134). Although the term implies a realization on stage, hardly any of the rock operas released on LP/CD have ever been performed on stage, and even if a production does reach the stage it has been previously released on disc (cf. Ziegenrücker/Wicke 331). Rock operas in their narrow definition qualify as ‘operas’ if they center around human beings and their conflicts and problems, and deal with these aspects in a coherent and cohesive way. The individual songs frequently mirror no more than the characters’ thoughts and emotions, which also accounts for the difficulty of staging rock operas (cf. Ziegenrücker/Wicke 331-332). This is, of course, also true for traditional opera; however, in contrast to classical music, action on stage is a vital and omnipresent ingredient in pop and rock music and is hardly ever achieved by merely transferring a character’s feelings to the stage. Yet, the most important difference between a rock opera on the one hand and traditional opera and musical on the other seems to be the fact that rock operas – if staged – are usually performed by the composers/musicians themselves. A case in point is the rock opera Tommy, which will be looked at in more detail in part 3 of this paper. Thus, in contrast to the traditional scores in classical music and traditional musical, the