Rock Operas
Rock operas are a unique artistic genre that blends rock music with operatic storytelling, emerging prominently in the late 1960s. They originated as rock lyrics began to mature into a more respected literary form, with notable influences from artists like Bob Dylan and The Beatles. The Who's "Tommy," released in 1969, is widely recognized as the first rock opera, offering a narrative that explored a young man's quest for morality through a rock idiom. Other significant contributions to the genre include "Jesus Christ Superstar," created by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, which reinterpreted the story of Jesus’s last days through contemporary rock music.
The impact of rock operas was profound, bridging the gap between rock music and musical theater, and altering how traditional musicals were composed and performed. Their success on platforms like Broadway and in Europe helped to attract younger audiences, revitalizing theater and shifting its cultural center from New York City to London. Despite their initial popularity, rock operas did not lead to a widespread adoption of the format among rock musicians, yet they established a lasting legacy within both rock and theatrical scenes.
Rock Operas
The literary zenith of the rock lyric. The development of the rock opera demonstrated rock music to be a viable medium for expressing ideas and ideological concepts.
Origins and History
The rock lyric developed rapidly in the 1960’s as a literary form. The vacuous lyrics of pop and bebop, which were subservient to the driving beat of rock and roll, were giving way to lyrics that reflected the social concerns of the developing counterculture.
In 1965, when Bob Dylan joined socially significant folk music lyrics with rock music, the result was a rapidly evolving rock lyric with a new intellectual respectability. Rock music rapidly developed subgenres such as psychedelic and progressive rock. In 1967, the Beatles expanded the boundaries of the independent psychedelic and progressive rock song by creating the “concept album.” The album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band unified its component songs on a central theme that reflected the counterculture and presented an optimistic social statement of a future realized through self-discovery and love. This album took the music world by storm and has even been credited with unifying, at least briefly, the fragmented minds of Western youth.
Pete Townshend of the Who was inspired by Sgt. Pepper to create an album that outlined the story of a young man’s personal search for morality and that functioned on both symbolic and real levels. Although Townshend’s narrative was developed in the rock idiom, it most closely resembled the opera form. Tommy (1969) is credited with being the first rock opera and was an international hit in its album and concert formats. Even though Tommy was never presented as a staged musical or opera because it was not theatrically cohesive, the Who received the unprecedented honor of performing it in opera houses throughout Europe and finally in New York’s prestigious Metropolitan Opera House. A spokesperson for the Met described Tommy as an opera in a new language.
While Townshend was creating Tommy, two other young British musicians were experimenting independently. Andrew Lloyd Webber, a classically trained musician who aspired to write for the theater, and Tim Rice, who had an encyclopedic knowledge of rock and roll with a desire to write rock lyrics, had been invited to write a short cantata on a religious theme. The result was Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1968), in which they discovered they could tell a story using popular musical styles without a narrative line, creating a kind of opera. When a recording of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat unexpectedly became a hit album in England, the two decided to attempt to tell the story of Jesus’s last seven days entirely in rock music. The resulting rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar (1969), was released as a double album in England and the United States, selling more than three million copies within two years.
Impact
The emergence of the rock opera in 1969 had very different effects on rock music and musical theater. Rock musicians, in general, did not seize upon the rock opera format even though the rock lyric was proven to be an effective medium for the communication of complex issues and ideas. The rock opera did establish the acceptability of rock in the musical theater. It quickly changed the way traditional musicals were written and performed, requiring amplified sound and modern orchestrations even for musical comedy revivals.
Subsequent Events
Townshend completed a second rock opera, Quadrophenia (1973), a study in spiritual desperation against the background of the British Mod subculture. Although Quadrophenia did not achieve the international success of its predecessor, it climbed to number two on the charts, providing the Who with their highest chart rating. When Jesus Christ Superstar opened on Broadway in 1971, its impact was unexpected and unprecedented. The rock opera attracted a new, young audience that began to revitalize the Broadway theater. In London, Jesus Christ Superstar became the longest running musical in English history. The contemporary rock opera became the most successful theatrical genre and shifted the center of musical theater from New York City to London. A theatrically restructured Tommy, complete with one new song, was finally produced on Broadway in 1993, completing the transformation from rock-opera album to staged rock opera.
Additional Information
Paul Friedlander examines the development of Townshend’s rock operas in Rock and Roll: A Social History (1996), and Michael Walsh details the establishment of rock opera on the stage in Andrew Lloyd Webber: His Life and Works (1989).