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Since the CD jewel box carries a sticker reading, "From the creator of The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall," it is important to note at the outset that Roger Waters' ?a Ira is not a rock concept album or rock opera; indeed, it does not contain rock music at all. The music is best described as classical, played by a symphony orchestra and sung by opera singers. Nor does it contain an appearance by Waters as a performer. He is the composer, and he also co-produced the album. ?a Ira (the title "literally means 'it will go'" in French, notes Waters, though he provides the subtitle "There Is Hope") has been described as an opera, but, at least on record, it might better be called an oratorio. The difference between the two, of course, has to do with staging and theatrical content. Based on a libretto by French songwriter Etienne Roda-Gil (though written in English without any of his actual words), ?a Ira is set during the first phase of the French Revolution, from the storming of the Bastille in 1789, to the executions of King Louis XVI and his Queen, Marie Antoinette, in 1793. Although the stated purpose of the work is to celebrate the triumph of democracy over monarchy, the only distinct characters are the King and Queen. Otherwise, the major characters are abstract or generic. There is a narrator, called the Ringmaster (since the staging calls for a circus setting), and other characters include the Troublemaker and a Revolutionary Priest. In this recording, the character distinctions are blurred further by the reduced number of performers. Bryn Terfel, for example, sings the parts of the Ringmaster, the Troublemaker, and the King, and sometimes he goes from one part to another without a break. Three different choirs also appear, one of them a children's choir that sings in lower-class British accents. This provides one of the few ties to Waters' earlier work -- one can easily imagine the children suddenly breaking into a chorus of "We don't need no education" from "Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2." They don't, however. Like other pop and rock musicians who have turned to classical music, such as Paul McCartney and Billy Joel, Waters turns out to have a fairly traditional idea of the form. Perhaps in aspiring to legitimacy, he has written a work that harks back to the Romantic movement of the 18th century, music that in some ways grew out of the French Revolution. And ?a Ira is certainly a legitimate classical composition. Whether it justifies its intentions is another question, however. If, as annotator Nick Sedgwick points out, the early years of the Revolution have not been treated much in the arts, that may be because they involved so much turmoil and led directly not to liberty, but to the Reign of Terror. As Waters closes his work, he cannot help using the sound of a guillotine falling as a percussion device, and that means that if, as he says, there is hope, it must be only in the long-term sense. William Ruhlmann.

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