Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Gathering Storm
2. Overture
3. Garden In Vienna 1765
4. Madame Antoine Madame Antoine
5. Kings Sticks And Birds
6. Honest Bird Simple Bird
7. I Want To Be King
8. Let Us Break All The Shields
9. Grievances Of The People
10. France In Disarray
11. To Laugh Is To Know How To Live
12. Slavers Landlords Bigots At Your Door
13. Fall Of The Bastille
14. To Freeze In The Dead Of Night
15. So To The Streets In The Pouring Rain
16. Dances And Marches
17. Now Hear Ye
18. Flushed With Wine
19. Letter
20. My Dear Cousin Bourbon Of Spain
21. Ship Of State Is All At Sea
22. Silver Sugar And Indigo
23. To The Windward Isles
24. Papal Edict
25. In Paris There's A Rumble Under The Ground

Disc 2:

1. Fugitive King
2. But The Marquis Of Boulli Has A Trump Card Up His Sleeve
3. To Take Your Hat Off
4. Echoes Never Fade From That Fusillade
5. Commune De Paris
6. Vive La Commune De Paris
7. National Assembly Is Confused
8. Execution Of Louis Capet
9. Adieu Louis For You It's Over
10. Marie Antoinette (The Last Night On Earth)
11. Adieu My Good And Tender Sister
12. Liberty
13. And In The Bushes Where They Survive

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28874 in Music
• Released on: 2005-09-26
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: .27 pounds
• Running time: 111 minutes

From the Label
Work on Ça Ira, his first opera for full orchestra and voice, began in 1989, during the Bicentennial of the French Revolution. Waters was introduced to the well-respected and successful songwriter Etienne Roda-Gil and his wife, Nadine, by a mutual friend. They had created an original libretto for an opera, written in French, as part of the Bicentennial, entitled Ça Ira, after a revolutionary song of the period.

Waters was deeply impressed by the passion and the power of Etienne's manuscript and began work on creating a full orchestral score for Ça Ira. Work on the project was suspended when Nadine died tragically of leukaemia, but in 1997, Roger began writing an English version of the text. The finished version of Ça Ira features orchestration and choral arrangements by Rick Wentworth and Roger Waters, also the album's producers.

Principal characters in the opera are brought to life by Bryn Terfel (the Ringmaster, the Troublemaker, Louis Capet - the King of France); Internationally acclaimed soprano Ying Huang (Marie Marianne - the Voice of Liberty, Reason and the Republic, Marie Antoinette - the Queen of France); American tenor Paul Groves (A Revolutionary Priest, A Military Officer); and Senegalese "one man orchestra" Ismael Lo (a Revolutionary Slave).

Customer Reviews

A long time coming, but worth the wait -- probably.
This opera has been in gestation for many many years and I can't remember looking forward to listening to any album as much as I have this one. And has it been worth the wait? Yes; probably - read on.

In the first instance this isn't the music of 'old' Waters, or of Floyd. If you don't like classical or opera, you're just not going to like this - plain and simple.

Secondly, the opera definately needs to be listened to several times to fully appreciate it. It is a grand work after all, and the music and it's subject matter requires your full attention. Like much of Rogers music, it may be hard work on the first listen but patience pays dividends.

The packaging is very nice indeed. The DVD documentary lacks any real depth, but it does give some insight to the man himself, who appears to have mellowed much with age.

The 59 page booklet contains the full libretto, and some interesting artwork. I must confess to finding some of Roger's English interpretation (whether accurate or not) to sound just odd, and one can't help but reviving that old chestnut that perhaps English is just not the natural language of opera and perhaps the piece would have just sounded altogether more beautiful in French. Who knows. Of course the music is where it counts and it is certainly rousing and patriotic sounding stuff. Sing-along tunes in the vein of Bizet or Rosinni are thinner on the ground that one would like but it make's up for it in plenty of 'Oomph'. The children's choruses are reminiscent of modern musicals rather than opera; something that Lloyd Weber would put on stage which is a comparison Roger would loathe.

All in however, it's difficult not to be impressed by the sheer scope of the work and by Roger's musical prowess. The music will grow on anyone who gives it a chance and there is plenty of enjoyment to be had in these 2 discs. It is, in places, quite glorious. All in, certainly not a dissapointment -- 4 stars.

Depends how you like your eggs
How do you like your eggs? Boiled, scrambled, poached?

We all have favourites, but in the end it's all eggs, isn't it. And so it is with Ca Ira; it's still Roger Waters.

Like many I came to this not as an opera fan, rather a fan of the man's work. I have been moved by it for over 25 years and was very curious to learn what this piece, a significant chunk of Water's creative life, is all about.

Fortunately my time has been rewarded. I enjoy it to the point where, several days of regular listening on, I'm haunted by and humming some of it. That subconscious process, more than direct listening, reveals the common thread that links this with other work such as The Wall, The Final Cut and Waters' solo albums. That's not to say this is chunks of old music put to new words, but as you might expect, the voice of the writer can be clearly heard. The curious thing is that in some ways Ca Ira makes me see things in the older work I had missed, blinded perhaps by those guitar solos.

So yes, I like it. No, it is not an instant sing-a-long (or should that be air guitar-a-long) rock classic, but it has great emotional depth. I found watching the dvd invaluable - it's a South Bank Show-style documentary and worth buying the edition with it included - followed by listening while reading the libretto a very useful way to get in to the piece. It covers long periods, big ideas and huge events (The French Revolution) and so is not likely to make you giggle and laugh, but then what Waters' material does? What it does do is make you think and, more importantly, make you feel.

25 years ago I repeatedly played The Wall while running a mental movie in my head, inspired by the music. Today I'm doing the same with Ca Ira. I can think of no better compliment.

C'est magnifique mais ce n'est pas rock 'n' roll
I had always wanted to use the quote above, which paraphrases from a remark made by General Canrobert upon witnessing the charge of the Light Brigade to their certain deaths in the Crimean War, as the title to a review of The Final Cut, but now Roger Waters presents me with a far better subject for such a review title.

Ironies linger. A previous reviewer has remarked, perhaps defensively, about Roger Waters' disdain for Andrew Lloyd Webber, made so wonderfully overt in Amused To Death. But there is no fine distinction between musical and opera that I know of - and I have no doubt Lloyd Webber too would like to be taken more seriously as a classical composer than he is. The opera set are a hellishly snobbish crowd, and not just any Johnny-Come-Lately will be feted as a genuine composer. Undoubtedly Roger Waters - who is, after all, a ROCK MUSICIAN, will find himself in exactly the same spot as Lloyd Webber, though on the strength of past comments, I doubt he will get much sympathy from him.

That said, this is a very presentable, listenable, outing, and it sounds cracking in 5.1 surround sound on the SACD. I dare say Puccini won't be rocking in his box - nor would Waters be expecting him to - but while it doesn't forge any new ground in orchestral music what Ca Ira does do is help contextualise much of Waters earlier, more overtly rock, oeuvre. There is something undeniably symphonic about Waters use of themes and motifs through his music and I think this might explain Water's much talked about lack of melody (though how anyone could accuse "The Gunner's Dream", or "Nobody Home", or "Southampton Dock" of lacking melody is beyond me): rather than writing three minute pop songs, Waters is more interested in focussing on making a broader musical statement.

Certainly, and just as with his earlier rock records, familiar themes - on grand scales and small ones - abound. The opening riff from The Wall's "In The Flesh" - as transliterated into "Dunroamin, Duncarin, Dunlivin" on The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking - is further adjusted and used as a recurring motif on the first side of Ca Ira. The shrieking, fade out voice from the end of "One of My Turns" is reprised - admittedly by a powerful tenor, but the similarity is unmistakeable. The happy sounds of summer from "Goodbye Blue Sky" are back, and I thought I heard the chord progression resembling the one from "The Gunner's Dream" also. Waters does make several cameo appearances, ordering the firing squads in the manner of Pink in The Wall. In one piece, the cellos are, I'm sure, playing the riff to the Bee Gee's Tragedy. Not sure if that was a deliberate reference, though.

Nevertheless, the old boy has definitely mellowed. An accompanying DVD shows him lounging around during the writing of the opera on the lawn of his stately mansion in Hampshire with his French librettists, showing more of the leg and chest of a stately gentleman than a commoner really ought to see. But the control-freakery hasn't entirely abated: during vocal recording sessions he would sit right on the soloist' shoulder and comment on the performance of takes, sometimes even singing along. Bryn Terfel didn't look altogether thrilled to be told how to sing by a man who famously sounds like a cat being strangled.

The result, however, is undeniably an audiophile masterpiece. I don't know much about classical music apart from what I like, but this sounds positively peachy. Some particularly super guillotine effects sweep across the soundstage from time to time (perhaps in lieu of the missile from Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert).

It's early days. A new piece by Roger Waters takes months to fully get itself inside your head. Give it time. But don't mourn the missing electric guitar.

Olly Buxton