Ça Ira

Last night, I finally got my hand on the long-anticipated “Ça Ira”, Roger Waters first opera, an opera in English about the French revolution in three acts that had been occupied his mind for almost a decade.

Although I was excepting some kind of jubilation, almost the same ecstasy that I felt after listening to “Pros and Cons of hitch-hiking” or “Amused to Death” for the first time, what I felt was more a sense of disillusionment rather than anything close to a joyous one. Almost the same feeling that had when I was leaving the theatre, where I saw Woody Allen’s latest movie, “Match Point”, except then, I was accompanied by a lovely lady who lessened the pain dramatically!

While I still firmly believe that English is not a suitable language for the Opera, and this one strengthened my stand too, I’m not suggesting at all that “Ça Ira” is not a good piece of work. The same way that I absolutely do not think “Match Point” is a bad movie. Surly there are beautiful moments in this opera, “Marie Antoinette, the last night on earth” and “To the windward Isles” to name a few, and certainly “Match Point” has its brilliant scenes and of course traces of their styles can be found in both works (Ça Ira” is more Waters though than “Match Point” is Allen-ish!), but for God’s sake, there are hundreds, if not thousands, who are able to write a rather good opera or a well-constructed movie, but there are only two people on this planet who can make “Annie Hall” or “The Final Cut” and these two are better stop fooling around with this experimenting thing since unfortunately there are not in their twenties!

And if anytime we need a cheesy but relatively OK opera in English, we always have Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber to do so!

I recall somebody wrote in Leonard Bernstein’s remembrance that “There are so many people in the world who can conduct a Bruckner’s symphony as good as you did, but Music I heard with you (also one of his compositions) will not be repeated ever again!



P.S. I have to admit that I’ve only listened to 2 CD’s extract version and not the original 6 CD version but Since the extract versions usually comprise all the good arias, I doubt that the full version would change my mind, but if it did, I’d let you know and also, the CD cover is really cool!