Queen
A Night At The Opera

THE REVIEW

Figaro here, Figaro there. Figaro low, Figaro high + Rebel Rebel you've torn your dress + any slow piece. What do these pieces have in common? Until 1975, nothing for everyone. Since 1975, music for everyone.

“A Night at the Opera” with “Bohemian Rhapsody” is the explicit manifesto of how music, unlike the labels that are wrongfully or rightfully imposed on it, escapes classifications and Freddie is its Mercury, the messenger between the Gods and us, embodying this concept in the most apex manner. Colossal album.

1) “Death on two Legs… dedicated to”. We're not so dull that we don't realize the beginning is already something different. That difficult arpeggio on black keys in F# on Freddie's piano, that guitar that screams an ambulance, that stealthy intro from Brian, that direct accusation to Trident manager Nelson whom the piece is dedicated to ("bloodsucker, big shot, leech, old mule, pompous, "death on two legs") already makes us understand what intentions the Queen have. That of breaking everything and reaching the top. A screaming heavy piece.

2) “Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon”. Relax boys! There's the usual Freddie who will take you with his magic into more relaxing and 30s atmospheres. A dandy traveling around the world all week who finds relief on Sunday afternoon through a very simple and swing musical setup that will lift the smile even on the most stuck-up modernist fan of Britney Spears.

3) “I'm in Love with my car”. Roger Taylor's greatest song. Mastodonic, immense, roaring and it should deserve even more honors than it has already received. The drummer was a lover of speed and cars. This is true eulogy. It showcases an extremely high voice supported by Mercury's choirs. Taylor's level as a singer-songwriter was never reached again. Chills at 300 km/h!!!

4) “You're my best friend”. Obviously, the deacon of Queen, aka John Deacon, who had terribly failed as a songwriter on the previous album, this time had realized that writing a song is a tough task. Well. It's such a sweet, melodic, and dreamy piece that it not only deserved a dignified place in the Greatest Hits approved by all countries (there were different choices per country) but also a music video was made, which was unusual at the time (Boh Rhap will be the first official music video in music history). The theme of friendship will always be dear to the bassist and with this song, you will celebrate it too. Deacon deserves a summa cum laude for his degree as a songwriter!

5) "’39". Brian venturing into country-folk? Yes, guys and the experiment is a success! This is because the entire album aims to give that brushstroke of ancient and eternal that only classic and traditional pieces can guarantee. If in addition, we add historical-realistic themes like in this case, the positive result is guaranteed. If it wasn't for Brian's voice, this song would fit perfectly.

6) “Sweet Lady”. The most elusive piece of the entire album perhaps because it's the least melodic but with great potential. A May track with many Taylor variations and beautiful progressions with slowdowns. One of those pieces that aren't loved at first listen but with time. You won't regret it.

7) “Seaside rendezvous”. A very fast ballad, without strumming, and highly melodic and carefree as only Freddie Mercury could craft. He still continues that retro taste of a few decades earlier. How Mercury loved life! From this moment on the singer will not let anything escape him in terms of fun. Love song, happy song, eternal song.

8) “The prophet song”. Terrifying! It stems from a dream of Brian but very much reflects the nightmare of the ballad of the "old sailor" in Coleridge where dark voyages, a sense of fate breathing on the shoulder, apocalypse, anamorphic figure of this “wise man” that we must “listen to” to avoid catastrophe. And that central part, let's say it?, where the music stops and there are dozens of perfectly intertwined operatic choirs by Freddie! 8 minutes of song where you'll be holding your breath. Opera, opera, encyclopedic opera!!!!

9) “Love of my life”. These guys really gave it their all with this album. But just listen to that voice, that well-crafted, clever, and composed piano score and that expression of Freddie Mercury! We are on the highest levels. A very "gay" love song if we want to with the use of soft falsettos and slight hints of Brian's harp. It's not the usual C chord progression, this is the emblem of Freddie's more romantic vein. Live then, Brian will match Freddie's piano difficulty with the guitar and it will become a less gentle but more collective cohesion piece. The audience in every part of the globe will sing it without Freddie's help. When we get to this point, we have understood everything...

10) “Good company”. Perhaps the flabbiest piece of the entire album. This too is very rhymed and cheerful and reminiscent of bygone years. Sung again by Brian, it makes us smile also for the execution with the ukulele. Too simplistic to be in “A night at the opera” but perhaps it's also a strategic fortune that it is placed just before the supreme work of art, "Bohemian Rhapsody".

11) “Bohemian Rhapsody”. I thank God for appointing Freddie Mercury to give us the most beautiful song ever… Forgive me but I have no other words.

12) “God save the Queen”. Exactly, indeed! God save the Queen not only in this instrumental version by Brian on guitar replicating the English anthem which he will play a few years ago exactly on the terrace of “Buck House” (reproduced in "cassette" version at the end of concerts) but also save Queen from oblivion. We will have no doubts about this.

“A night at the Opera” is Queen's masterpiece. An immense and stressful, baroque and classical, experimental and poly-stylistic work with those styles of the past not distant from each other but congruent within and that definitively consecrates them in the Olympus of the greats. From now on, with results often fluctuating, nothing will stop them except that evil that will arrest the rhapsodic and bohemian genius in 1991.