From Opera to the Concept Album – Telling Stories through Song
*Special thanks to my best friend Jennifer, who helped me with this piece
I am a huge fan of concept albums and musicals. The two have a lot of overlap, both in style in many situations and in production, as concept albums have been made into musicals or movies. But at the core both have the same form, telling a story through song. But these two are not the only kinds of music that do so. Long before the Beatles wrote Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, operas told stories through song as a form of entertainment for the masses.
In many ways, this is an evolution of music, from the opera to light opera, to musicals, to the concept album. In another, it’s music going full circle, with concept albums being called rock operas.
I will only be looking at a narrow band of Western, mostly English-speaking countries, musical traditions. There are tons of other traditions from all over the world of course, and American and British music has, particularly in the 20th and 21st centuries, been heavily derived and influenced by them. But that would be a thesis, not an article, so I’m going to keep this narrow and in my own musical wheelhouse.
The Opera/Oratorios
I don’t really know that much about opera - my parents weren’t really into it and I’ve never really done so either. But opera was largely a form of entertainment for the masses back in the day, and has moved now to “high culture” (the disingenuous-ness of labeling things high and low culture is a piece for another day). But, regardless of the audience in question, at its core, opera is telling a story via song albeit in an extremely dramatic and over-the-top way. And probably in Italian. The oratorio, which was popular in the same, very general time frame, are basically opera but around religious themes and stories.
Music has always been used in plays, but opera and oratorios dispense with the silly dialogue thing and sticks to singing. But, again the core concept is a story told via song and song alone.
The Light Opera
Light opera is what it’s name suggests - a lighter, largely fluffier, version of opera. I am only familiar with Gilbert and Sullivan, so I can really only speak to their plays, rather than the entire genre. But they are, by and large, ridiculous. Hilarious and ridiculous. Just listen to “With Cat-like Tread” from Pirates of Penzance.
But importantly, they are in English. Opera is, and certainly was in the 17th-19th centuries, dominated by Italian, and to a lesser extent some German, creating a possible barrier to entry for people from different countries. Having the “story in song form” told in the native language lowers the barrier of entry and makes the whole thing more accessible. Also, like I said, light opera is, at the end of the day, supposed to be fun. The entertain part of entertainment.
The Musical
The musical is, for all intents and purposes, light opera for the 20th century. They certainly aren’t less dramatic or intense, particularly depending on who’s singing or the show in question. And musicals are just as much about over-the-top production as traditional opera. Singing in the Rain has a dream sequence within a dream sequence, and if that’s not self-indulgent spectacle, I’m not sure what is. Really, the only real difference is the phasing out of vibrato by the sopranos (and good riddance in my opinion).
Musicals can have dialogue or not, it depends. There is effectively no dialogue in Rent (the Broadway show, not the movie which does have dialogue) or Evita, but plenty in Singing in the Rain and Hello Dolly. The musical isn’t opera - it’s in the local language, likely has dialogue, and some of the singing styles have changed. But it is the direct descendant of opera, or maybe opera’s protege trying to make its own name.
The Concept Album
The concept album is, by and large, an album around either a single story or central conceit. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band can be viewed as a series of song vignettes showing a metaphorical “day in the life” of various people - and the final song is called “A Day in the Life.” That’s more of a central conceit kind of album. Another of album of this kind would be The Kinks’ “Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)” - a great album by the way, and well worth listening to.
The other kind of concept album is one that tells a story via a series of songs, much like a musical or an opera does. In fact The Who’s “Tommy” is considered a rock opera - bringing these musical forms full circle and back to opera. The definition is despite the fact it wasn’t combined with a visual medium for several years, until it became a film. There is also the story concept album “American Idiot” by Green Day (which is unfairly maligned) that was adapted, along with the follow-up album, 21st Century Breakdown into a Broadway musical. Since an album is just songs, obviously, a concept album of the second type is a return to telling a story without any dialogue, just music.
Conclusion
The lines between musical forms is fuzzy to say the least. Rock and musicals have been feeding off each other, morphing between the two for decades. Rock musicals are generally called rock operas, and some, like Jesus Christ Superstar are firmly in the lexicon of musicals. Also, fun fact, it was written by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Yep the guy who wrote Phantom of the Opera also wrote a rock opera about Jesus.
Rap musicals like Hamilton further muddy the differences. Rap is a much newer musical form, at least in the US, but it can be musically analogous to the “patter song,” a staple of, you guess it, light opera and Gilbert and Sullivan.
While the evolution of the musical story, for lack of a better term - is fairly straightforward, the relationship between these music forms is not. Musical styles and forms constantly inform and influence each other, edges blurring together. But that’s what makes it amazing. People need both stories and music, and what better why to do that then to blend them together?
