A Night At The Opera

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During the 70s Queen were one of the biggest bands around. With their shameless theatrical bombast and equal propensity for blistering hard rock and vaudevillian camp, not to mention their instrumental prowess and Freddy Mercury's otherworldly voice.. If you wanted a blueprint for a great rock band, Queen would be it. And 1975's "A Night at the Opera" was their crowning moment. The album's definin... read more

Description: Amazon.co.uk Review One of the most preposterous albums ever made, A Night at the Opera also remains one of the most popular. While it is difficult to completely dislike a record that successfully introduced the phrase "Scaramouche! Scaramouche! Will you do the fandango?" into the popular lexicon, it is harder still to understand quite what Queen were thinking of when they made this. Whether or not Queen were fully aware of their own absurdity remains a moot point. However, if one can find the hefty psychic hooks and pulleys necessary to suspend this much disbelief, A Night at the Opera is a perversely enjoyable record Amazon.co.uk Review
One of the most preposterous albums ever made, A Night at the Opera also remains one of the most popular. While it is difficult to completely dislike a record that successfully introduced the phrase "Scaramouche! Scaramouche! Will you do the fandango?" into the popular lexicon, it is harder still to understand quite what Queen were thinking of when they made this. Whether or not Queen were fully aware of their own absurdity remains a moot point. However, if one can find the hefty psychic hooks and pulleys necessary to suspend this much disbelief, A Night at the Opera is a perversely enjoyable record. The awesomely daft and supremely catchy "Bohemian Rhapsody" aside, it contains the almost equally risible excursions "The Prophet's Song" and "39", a couple of the irresistibly amusing headbanger numbers that Queen could write in their sleep ("Death On Two Legs") and the very possibly heartfelt pop ballad "You're My Best Friend". Immortally baffling, like the pyramids. Yet also enjoyably compelling. --Andrew Mueller

From Amazon.com
Nothing succeeds like excess--at least that's the case with Queen's breakthrough commercial smash, A Night at the Opera. On one level, the title is a reference to the band's operatic pretensions, best in evidence here on the classic "Bohemian Rhapsody," which was championed by headbangers a generation before being revived by the Wayne's World set. Of course, A Night at the Opera is also the title of a Marx Brothers movie, and the reference isn't lost on Queen, which seldom scaled the heights of rock pomp without a knowing wink. The album is remembered for its meticulously produced bombast, but the truth is that there's a wide variety of material on display here, from the gorgeous piano-based "You're My Best Friend" and the McCartneyesque "39," to the music-hall-style "Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon" and the pedal-to-the-metal rockers "Death on Two Legs" and "I'm in Love with My Car." A Night at the Opera is viewed by most as the quintessential Queen album, and justifiably so. --Daniel Durchholz

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