Queen's 30th Anniversary of A Night At The Opera
Written: Dec 01 '05 (Updated Apr 29 '06)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Great music, wonderful packaging, the sound is awesome
Cons: Some of the videos could have been more creative
The Bottom Line: Masterpiece Music Gets The Royal Treatment
|
|
|
| scapp70's Full Review: A Night At The Opera [CD & DVD] - Queen |
I think it's great that Queen have honored themselves with a new release of one of their greatest accomplishments. Of course, I am talking about Queen's American breakthrough album, A Night At The Opera. When I first heard about this release, I was kind of outwardly annoyed that I would have to go and purchase this and add it to my growing collections of A Night At The Opera. As I look over my shoulder right now, I see that I own six different editions of this 1975 masterpiece. I always think that this next edition will be the one. Inwardly, I was as excited as I always get.
This CD/DVD edition is right now, the one that I hold dearest. First, I went right for the DVD disc, on this very special Tuesday, (thank you Amazon.com for getting this to me on release day). The DVD disc contains 12 videos, one for each song. Originally there were two promotional videos, one for You're My Best Friend, and one for Bohemian Rhapsody, (actually there are two for Bo Rhap, but they are very similar). So there were ten new videos created for the DVD. The DVD's soundtrack is a wonderful high definition (96/24) stereo version of the entire album, and then the amazing DTS 5.1 mix for the entire album as well.
The additional 10 videos made were directed by Simon Lupton & Rhys Thomas. While these two directors are light-years better than the previous Queen team, The Torpedo Twins, I believe some of them could have been better.
The first video, Death On Two Legs, shows the band performing live sometime in 1977 mostly. The video, like most of the others, is comprised of more than one performance. The song is dedicated to former manager Norman Sheffield, and the lyrics are venomous as the dedication is not so kind-hearted. Mr. Sheffield, reportedly, had Queen on a salary up until this album, and received no royalties for album sales, or radio airplay. Yet, he was raking it in, and according to Freddie buying his second Rolls Royce. The music is just as dark and murky as the lyrics.
The video for vaudeville-sounding Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon is a slide show of pictures showing Queen lazing around during this time period.
Roger Taylor's I'm In Love With My Car video looks like it is made up of live performances of the song from 1977 and 1978 shows. This is the second video made for the song, the first is found on the UK video release for the Queen Rocks CD. The music is loud and heavy, especially with Roger's extra raspy vocals. The lyrics are literally what the title suggests; it is about a person in love with their car.
John Deacon's You're My Best Friend is the promotional video from 1976. This was the second hit off the album, very commercial sounding and radio friendly. John is seen here in the video playing the electric piano and he's not shown tackling his very busy bass lines. I'm not sure if it's my eyes playing tricks on me, but it looks like the video was cleaned up slightly from the awful transfer on their Greatest Video Hits 1.
Brian May's very acoustic almost country/folk song '39 gets a new video. Here we have snippets of the 1969 space shuttle video, along with Brian alone on his 12 string, during Queen's latest tour with Paul Rodgers, (in fact, it's taken right from the Sheffield show now on DVD), and also Queen performing the song in 1977.
Another Brian May composition, Sweet Lady is next and taken almost entirely from Queen's free concert in Hyde Park, late 1976. In this video, we see mostly the back of Freddie Mercury, and we see that either Freddie is wearing a thong-like underwear under that leotard or there's a major wedgie happening. Freddie's vocals remain near the top of his range, yet the power of his voice remains the same, he really shines on this vocal. This is a very heavy bluesy number, Brian and John Deacon constantly playing those scales and riffing like mad.
More vaudeville from singer Freddie Mercury with his very camp Seaside Rendezvous. The video made is made up of what looks like some archive silent era film of the seaside experience. The video tries to be comical, and it comes off slightly humorous, to me. I think Simon Lupton & Rhys Thomas are more like those old Torpedo Twins than I first thought.
The video for my favorite song, The Prophet's Song is pretty good. I was fantasizing about something a lot better (see the end of this review). Brian's hands were used for the new video. His hands are seen playing the acoustic guitar and the toy koto he received as a present during their 1975 tour of Japan. The video is mostly still black and white shots of Queen from their very early days and up until the Opera tour. As soon as the acapella section starts, a video from 1977 and 1973 is used. Then Queen closes out the show with the Earls Court 1977 show again.
Love Of My Life segues from The Prophet's Song, and this features sources of video from the 80s as well as the 70s. I don't appreciate the 80s footage, as it's my opinion that this album should focus on the 70s since this album was released at the end of 1975. But, like The Prophet's Song, this video shows new footage of Brian's hands playing the harp.
Brian's favorite new video here is of his composition of Good Company. This song mimics a New Orleans style of the jazz band, except all the instruments are performed by Brian and his Red Special. Each clarinet, trombone, sax or whatever is tracked separately by Brian, and the effect is wonderfully convincing. The video shows lots of archive footage again, just like Seaside Rendezvous had, except here the images are much more tailored to May's lyrics.
The Bohemian Rhapsody video here is not the usual one that is featured on Queen video compilations. Brian states that this is the original cut. This is the one with the flames during the intro and it also features different angles and different camera shots during the performance.
God Save The Queen shows mostly the Queen's Jubilee Concert from 1992, where Brian performed this song standing on the roof of the Royal Palace.
The CD is a remastered version again. Brian May states in the liner notes that it is a bit tiring how often we see the word Remastered on the cover of a CD, but he assures the listener that this CD was given so much time and effort, and this version is one of those that we could hear the difference.
What I hear right away is the silence of the CD when there is no music. The hiss is removed, just like the Greatest Hits: We Will Rock You compilation that came out last year had done.
All twelve songs sound great; this was not of the best sounding albums to begin with. This is the best I have ever heard the CD version sound so far, and like I said, I have many A Night At The Operas in my possession.
The package also comes with a booklet hidden in the left side of the CD when completely opened. The booklet comes with the usual lyrics, and the usual five pictures that usually come with the CD. This one goes a bit further as it includes a few more pages worth of pictures of Queen from this era recording the album.
The DVD also has commentary from each member during the songs. My favorites are from the older archive of interviews, when the album was first released. During Seaside Rendezvous, Freddie can be heard not being able to recall the name of Brian May's song Good Company. Also, a surprise for me was the subtitles during the commentary. I thought that this was a thoughtful touch, in case I wanted to listen to the music instead of the commentary, but still able to read the commentary. The lyrics are also featured on another channel of the subtitles.
My only gripe is that I wished that Queen would have used the option for some cool Queen animation. Instead of watching basically the video from the same show for each song, how about some brand new computer animated Queen videos. I got this idea from The Beatles official website. They have a couple of videos on their site, like one for Paperback Write and a real awesome one for Come Together. In my mind it would be even cooler to watch a new animated video for say, The Prophet's Song. Although these two director's are better than Queen's previous video directors (The Torpedo Twins), these two new ones still resort to that same stupid humor. Are there really Queen fans laughing at this?
But, I guess I can't complain, this is a great CD/DVD package. The music sounds better than I have ever heard it sound, and the fact that I have a visual now to go along with each and every song adds an amazing new dimension to the senses.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~For more Queen CD Epinions from Scapp70~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Queen
Queen II
Sheer Heart Attack
A Night At The Opera
A Night At The Opera - DVD Audio
A Day At The Races
News of the World
Jazz
Live Killers
The Game – DVD-Audio
Flash Gordon Soundtrack
Hot Space
The Works
A Kind Of Magic
At The BBC
Innuendo
Headlong (CD Single)
Too Much Love Will Kill You (CD Single)
Classic Queen
Heaven For Everyone (CD Single)
The Queen Symphony
Greatest Hits III
Crown Jewels
Stone Cold Queen – A Tribute
Greatest Hits
Queen On Fire At The Bowl
Killer Queen – A Tribute To Queen
A Night At The Opera – CD & DVD (30th Anniversary)
Stone Cold Classics
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Queen DVDs~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Queen - Greatest Video Hits 1
Queen - Greatest Video Hits 2
Queen + Paul Rodgers - Return Of The Champions
Queen - Magic Moments: Unauthorized
Queen: A Night At The Opera - DVD Audio
Queen: The Game - DVD Audio
Queen: A Night At The Opera - 30th Anniversary CD & DVD
Queen: We Will Rock You - DTS
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
scapp70
|
 - Top 500 |
|
Member: Michael Scapp
Location: NYC
Reviews written: 465
Trusted by: 255 members
About Me:
STOP Obama on 'NET NEUTRALITY'! Too much power = corruption!
|
|
|
![A Night At The Opera [CD & DVD] - Queen](http://img.epinions.com/images/opti/14/ac/609524-music-resized200.jpg)
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.