A Night At The Opera [VINYL]

Queen is one of those bands that everybody knows. Whether it's the hairy rockers head banging to "Tie Your Mother down" or the everyday, low IQ individual who only knows their greatest hits, Queen is one of the most well known bands to come out of England. The one thing that a lot of people do not realize about Queen is their extreme musical diversity. They do not just play the catchy rockers you get in the bargain bin greatest hits collections. The band have a habit of mixing things between heavy rock, pop, folk and even jazz. The overly talented foursome were not only great musicians but all had unique vocal abilities that benefited when the group sang together in strange, mesmerizing harmonies. All these weird and wonderful talents were used to their greatest of abilities over the years, however they never topped the fantastic, overly bombastic and quite charming " A Night At The Opera". "A Night At The Opera" is known for giving us two fantastic singles. The sweet, charming Deacon classic "You're My Best Friend" and the now Wayne's World favourite"Bohemian Rhapsody". These two songs aside, no one ever talks about the other songs on the album. For example, the eight minute epic "The Prophet's Song". Rumoured to be about The Great Flood, this song is Queen's longest track and easily their most progressive. It is a dreamy bit of work with some of Brian May's best guitar playing. How about the great folkish "Good Company?" The point is that taking any song off this album as a single is just blasphemy. The album runs from one track to another like it was a concept album and the variety of the music itself is just immense. Unlike a lot of bands at the time, this record is not straight electric guitar, bass and drums. There are many assorted instruments featured like Ukulele, harp and the ever faithful piano. The album was produced by Roy Thomas Baker and Queen themselves. They did a splendid job of giving the music a wonderful warm feeling. The album is full of life, the music is superbly written and it has the words "timeless" written all over it. This version I am reviewing is the 2011 remaster album. In this remaster the sound has had a fair kick in the backside. "A Night At The Opera" has been given some fantastic treatment and like the rest of the remastered albums, it is easily the best I have ever heard it. "A Night At The Opera" is a Hard Rock classic that very little people every speak about. Considering how much the album sold, it is amazing how many people never mention this album as a direct influence. Though there are moments when you can hear what could be rock band The Darkness in Queen. A band that has had a lot of comparisons with Queens 70's material and rightfully so. "A Night At The Opera" is a fantastic album that must be owned by pretty much everybody. There is such a wide range of musical diversity that there is not much to complain about. The only people that would not buy into this album are the kind that don't buy into hype or the simple narrowed minded types that want an array of hits. How many times can someone listen to "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Don't Stop Me Now" without their accompanying albums... seriously?!

An excellent album indeed. Of course, there is the BR, which is an absolute classic in any genre, in anybody's opinion. But there are a plethora of other amazing tracks, all of different styles. The hard rock is present in the excellent riffing on 'Death on two legs'; it is powerful and melodic. The prog masterpiece 'Prophet song' is a culmination of all that is excellent in prog music - a beautiful acoustic opening, then a magnificient, pompous rock section. Then the acapella section - I like this, but maybe a tiny bit over bombastic, depends on my mood. I love the closing of the song, back to the acoustic intro, bookending the song well. I love the jazzy and vaudeville songs on here, with the excellent instrumentation. It reminds me a bit of Paul McCartney's whimsical ditties. 'Sunday afternoon' and 'seaside rendezvous' are extremely ambitious, and deceivingly simplistic. 'Good Company' is the first of Brian's numbers. It is lovely to hear him sing more, as he has such a sweet voice. '39' is a fantastic folk prog number, with lovely acoustic guitars and harmony vocals. I really like this song, reminds me of the group America. 'Love of my life' is also a beautiful ballad, nice harp playing and some ethereal lead vocals from Freddie. That leaves just two songs I don't really care for. (Save the God save the queen, which is great). 'I'm in love with my car' is just not that convincing and I just dig Roger's vocals. However, 'Sweet lady' is just horrible and unmelodic. Not my thing at all. However, this is an overall 5 start album. It is excellent, with so much to commend it, and deserves all the praise it has had.

This review is for the remastered single edition cd. A Night At The Opera is the fourth studio album by Queen and at the time was the most expensive record ever made. It was a commercial success upon its release in november 1975 topping the uk charts for four weeks. Brian May has since said "had it not been successful, Queen would have disbanded". First single was the now legendary "Bohemian Rhapsody" which topped the uk charts for nine weeks, other standout songs are "Prophet's Song" which is equally as good, "Death On Two Legs", "39" and "Love Of My Life". The only slightly weak track is "Sweet Lady" which in my opinion is two minutes too long as it meanders off half way through. There's also Roger Taylor's "I'm In Love With My Car" and John Deacon's "You're My Best Friend" with both of them doing a song for every new Queen LP. The album is a mix of rock, vaudeville; "Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon", "Seaside", and trad-jazz pastiche; "Good Company". This is one of the greatest rock albums ever made and sounds as good today as when it was released, these Bob Ludwig remasters are great highlighting all the instruments and vocals though judging by other reviews the bonus cd's seem a bit of a cash in and as such i won't be buying the two cd version. Why don't May and Taylor release the likes of "The Rainbow" "Hammersmith" "Hyde Park"(although some say this wasn't their best performance) which by the way was filmed and also recorded by Capitol radio but never broadcast, why is that by the way? plus "Earls Court" and the "bbc sessions" in their entirety for fans to really get their teeth into? Though this single cd version is highly recommended.

As described very quick delivery

OK, let me make it clear from the off: this review relates to a copy of the remastered CD only, since that's what I bought. And if you don't like this album, this review isn't going to attempt to persuade you to buy it or tell you that you really should like it. We all have different tastes, after all. All that said, this is a terrific remastering of a classic album. It's been done sympathetically, retaining the sound and tonal balance of the original but allowing an album recorded in an analog world to take full advantage of a digital one. Listening to my old CD against this remaster makes the old one sound like you're far away from the music; this puts you close up to it. The multi-layered, multi-person vocal lines come through especially well with it now being obvious (to me, at least) who is singing what. It makes my favourite tracks sound fresh and new, which takes some doing after first listening to them shortly after this album was released on vinyl back in the 1970s. So if you love this album and don't yet have a copy of this remastered version, buying this is a must. I love it to bits.

classic

Queen are a British rock band formed in London in 1970, originally consisting of Freddie Mercury (lead vocals, piano), Brian May (guitar, vocals), John Deacon (bass guitar), and Roger Taylor (drums, vocals). Queen's earliest works were influenced by progressive rock, hard rock and heavy metal, but the band gradually ventured into more conventional and radio-friendly works, incorporating further diverse styles into their music. Before joining Queen, Brian May and Roger Taylor had been playing together in a band named Smile with bassist Tim Staffell. Freddie Mercury (then known by his birth name of Farrokh "Freddie" Bulsara) was a fan of Smile, and encouraged them to experiment with more elaborate stage and recording techniques after Staffell's departure in 1970. Mercury himself joined the band shortly thereafter, changed the name of the band to "Queen", and adopted his familiar stage name. John Deacon was recruited prior to recording their eponymous debut album in 1973. Queen enjoyed success in the UK with their debut and its follow-up, Queen II in 1974, but it was the release of Sheer Heart Attack later in 1974 and A Night at the Opera in 1975 that gained the band international success. The latter featured "Bohemian Rhapsody", which stayed at number one in the UK Singles Chart for nine weeks; it charted at number one in several other territories, and gave the band their first top ten hit on the US Billboard Hot 100. Their 1977 album, News of the World, contained two of rock's most recognisable anthems, "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions". By the early 1980s, Queen were one of the biggest stadium rock bands in the world, with "Another One Bites the Dust" their best selling single, and their performance at 1985's Live Aid is regarded as one of the greatest in rock history. In 1991, Mercury died of bronchopneumonia, a complication of AIDS, and Deacon retired in 1997. Since then, May and Taylor have occasionally performed together, including a collaboration with Free and Bad Company vocalist Paul Rodgers under the name Queen + Paul Rodgers which ended in May 2009. Since 2011, May and Taylor have collaborated with vocalist Adam Lambert under the name of Queen + Adam Lambert. In late 2014, Queen will release a new album, Queen Forever, featuring vocals from the late Freddie Mercury. The band have released a total of 18 number one albums, 18 number one singles, and 10 number one DVDs. Estimates of their record sales generally range from 150 million to 300 million records, making them one of the world's best-selling music artists. They received the Outstanding Contribution to British Music Award from the British Phonographic Industry in 1990, and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001.

I was compelled to write a 5 star review after searching Amazon for 'Queen' and sorting by average customer review... albums like The Miracle (which is weak), The Works (good, but not this good) and A Kind of Magic (their last great album but still not even close to the quality of this one) are ranked higher than A Night At The Opera. In fact A Night At The Opera is ranked 44th - but they only made 15 studio albums (and several of those are truly awful!). Feel free to disagree with my comments on other Queen albums (go on, tell me why Hot Space is your favourite!), but this is their masterpiece. It's not just Queen's finest hour but one of the all time classic albums - and some clowns have given it one star reviews!!! (There aren't enough exclamation marks in the world right now). OK, most of those are for such trivial reasons as the lack of Autorip (don't be so lazy, rip it yourself - rip it to a lossless format instead of Amazon's dodgy variable bit rate MP3) or because they prefer the original to the remastered (get a secondhand copy - there are plenty of them around because this album sold by the ton) but there's no excuse for dragging this masterpiece of '70s pomp rock down! Now can everybody calm down and post a 5 star review until this situation is sorted?