Before there was recorded music, there were song cycles, which might be considered proto-albums, and if they had a unifying theme or concept, that would make them “concept albums.”
And of course, long before there were rock operas, there were opera operas.
A good example of a concept album is Ray Charles’ “Dedicated to You,” where each of the song titles includes a woman’s name. Hard Hearted Hannah, Ruby, Judy, etc. No way would it be mistaken for any kind of opera.
Tommy isn’t a rock opera. It’s a cantata, something Pete Townsend has admitted, but
“rock opera” sounded better.
The Kinks did both concept albums and rock operas. Lola vs. Powerman and the Money-go-Round is the latter, the story of a rock group starting out and achieving fame. One plot point is that they had a big hit single, and Ray Davies wrote “Lola” with that in mind. Preservation Act I and Act 2 also tell a story.
When explaining what a song cycle is to students, I generally say “it’s like a concept album, only it’s classical songs.”
In one sense, the first albums were all “concept albums.” The word originated in the early days of disc records, when symphonies and such were released on sets of shellac discs in paper sleeves, bound between cardboard covers (à la photo albums).
If the definition of “rock opera” is an album with a plot and characters singing the various songs, then I don’t see how Tommy isn’t a rock opera. Its narrative is far easier to make sense of than Quadrophenia, for instance.
Speaking of Tommy and recent rock operas, about ten years ago a country band called the Hillbenders put out their own version of Tommy with all-acoustic instruments and the subtitle “A Bluegrass Opry”. Well worth a listen, IMO.
Even though, as you say, it has “Rock Opera” right there in the title, I’m not sure “Southern Rock Opera” fits the definition established in this thread. It doesn’t really have a central group of characters or storyline. While there’s definitely a Lynyrd Skynyrd thread running through most of it, parts of it seem semi-autobiographical and some parts just seem to be an ode to Southern culture. It’s like they couldn’t exactly decide what they wanted it to be.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a great album, but I think I’d file it under “concept album” rather than “rock opera”.
On second thought, and after having listened to the album once more yesterday inspired by this thread, I agree. The piece has a clear protagonist in Ronnie Van Zant, and other recurring characters like Neil Young, Georg Wallace and Martin Luther King, but it’s not told from their perspective, but from that of the narrator reflecting these people and their times, mixed with autobiographical points. It’s not a story told like Tommy or Quadrophenia.
But not all Rock Operas are necessarily albums…like this pre-Tommy track by The Who:
That would be a ballad, not an opera. A ballad is one song that tells a story; an opera is multiple musical pieces that tell a story with no spoken narrative between. A musical is multiple pieces that tell a story with spoken narrative between musical pieces.
Or, that’s what I grew up believing.
Have you listened to it? It is six very distinct but interconnected songs sung from the POVs of a narrator (chorus) and at least three different characters.
Yes, I am quite familiar. Huge Who fan. We can sit here and debate semantics. You could call it an Operetta; whatever. Doesn’t matter. Would you call “Band On the Run” an opera? It’s three distinct songs combined into one that tells (somewhat) of a narrative. I call it a song and don’t think too deeply about it.
Confusingly enough, there’s also such a thing as a ballad opera.
That “somewhat” is a concept NOT a narrative, which is (like semantics) what this whole thread is about.
There are also operas that have spoken dialogue. Bizet’s Carmen, Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and Weber’s Der Freischutz are three I can think of off the top of my head.
FWIW, on the extended version of “Live At Leeds”, Pete Townshend announces “A Quick One” as “our mini-opera”.
Townsend’s point was that everything was sung by one singer (or a chorus of them). In an opera, the different characters are sung by different people. It’s splitting hairs, but technically “cantata” is the correct term.
On the original album, sure, but the symphonic version they put out two years later had a full cast including Steve Winwood, Rod Stewart, Richard Harris, and Ringo Starr. And of course there’s also the movie and the Broadway musical.
The Dear (sic) Hunter is an active (I believe) progressive rock band that has a concept/ rock opera that spans 6 albums. I myself have not followed the story but enjoy a few of their songs. Here’s one:
I believe that all of Coheed & Cambria’s albums are meant to be part of a grand operatic cycle, but I’ve never tried to get into it because it seems very dense and intimidating.
The exception is when they teamed up with Rick Springfield a few years back to record a sequel to Jesse’s Girl, but there’s also a character in their story called Jesse so there’s still a tangential connection.