Opera based on Pink Floyd's The Wall to premiere

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Opera de Montreal to stage Pink Floyd's The Wall to mark city's 375th anniversary

Pink Floyd’s 1979 album The Wall is to be made into a live opera to mark the city of Montreal’s 375th birthday.

The Opera de Montreal will premiere Another Brick In The Wall – The Opera from March 11-24, 2017, at the city’s Place Des Arts. Former bassist and founding member Roger Waters has also been recruited as the show’s librettist.

Part of the concept album was inspired after an incident at a 1977 Pink Floyd concert at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium in which Waters spat on a fan.

He tells a Montreal news conference: “The Wall is about the journey from the enmity of spitting in someone’s face to the position where love becomes more important than that enmity.”

Waters also admits he wasn’t keen on the concept when he was first approached.

He says: ”I think my reply was somewhat dismissive. It had been my experience that experiments in collaboration between the worlds of rock and roll and the worlds of symphonic music were generally disastrous and should be embarked upon with extreme trepidation. But they were extremely persuasive.

“They played me some midi of what they had been working on and I confess, I sat there not expecting to be moved, and I was moved. So I approach this project with great enthusiasm.”

Waters’ reissued solo album Amused To Death took home Best Surround Sound Album at the Grammys last month. Meanwhile, the Pink Floyd ex recently slammed bands and artists for not speaking out against Israel.

Tickets for Another Brick In The Wall – The Opera can be bought via Ticketmaster.

Christina O'Neill

Former TeamRock news desk member Christina joined our team in late 2015, and although her time working on online rock news was fairly brief, she made a huge impact by contributing close to 1500 stories. Christina also interviewed artists including Deftones frontman Chino Moreno and worked at the Download festival. In late 2016, Christina left rock journalism to pursue a career in current affairs. In 2021, she was named Local Weekly Feature Writer of the Year at the Scottish Press Awards.