On their third album (following the independently distributed
La Donna and the self-titled major-label debut of 2005),
Peter Kiesewalter and Tyley Ross'
East Village Opera Company continue to pursue their hybrid agenda of marrying classical music, particularly opera, to progressive and classic rock styles. That agenda continues to present a threshold question to listeners: is it valid or just a parlor trick? And different listeners may answer that question differently. Classical and opera fans probably are less likely than progressive and classic rock fans to be accepting or, to put it another way, to find the joke amusing. Assuming that the threshold can be crossed,
Old School pushes the process a little further than its predecessors.
Kiesewalter and Ross have taken some creative liberties with their classical, out-of-copyright sources by including some music and lyrics of their own here and there. Each track is based on a classical antecedent, with the works of
Wagner,
Mozart,
Handel,
Verdi, Bononcini, Bellini,
Gounod,
Johann Sebastian Bach, and
Puccini having been raided this time out. But less of them and more of the adapters can be heard than on previous albums. And so can many characteristic rock styles. In particular, the sounds of many guitarists are noticeable, particularly
Queen's
Brian May, but also
Jimmy Page,
David Gilmour,
the Edge of
U2, and
Lindsey Buckingham. "The Ride," the leadoff track, for example, may be drawn from
Wagner's Die Walküre, but it has been crossed with
Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog" and given a guitar solo like one of
Gilmour's from
Pink Floyd, and English lyrics have been added. "Brindisi Libera (Pop the Cork)," out of
Verdi's La Traviata, mixes English and Italian lyrics, boasts a disco beat, and fades out on a jazzy trumpet solo. "Soldiers" from
Gounod's Faust has a
May-like guitar part and rhythm patterns borrowed from
Edwin Starr's "War." All of this is efficiently accomplished. But somehow the threshold question never quite goes away. These descriptions may sound intriguing to the average
Meat Loaf or
Queen fan, and if so, the album is worth investigating. Adherents of
Wagner and
Verdi may not be so tolerant. ~ William Ruhlmann