Three decades ago Queen released their classic album “A Night at the Opera”, which went to No. 1 in many countries around the world, and on Monday, November 21, 1975, the first single from the album went to No.1 in the UK charts, a position it was to hold for 9 weeks.

Queen commemorate the 30th anniversary of this historic occasion – on Monday, November 21 2005 - with a new combined CD/DVD Special Collectors Edition release of the album.

‘A Night At The Opera’ is now regarded by many to be the definitive ’70s-era Queen release. Originally recorded in no less than six different studios between August and November 1975, it was reckoned at the time to be the most expensive album ever recorded, although, at around £45,000, it now looks remarkably cheap at the price.
Their fourth album, ‘A Night At The Opera’ encapsulated everything about Queen’s music that made it so unique. Combining outstanding showmanship with remarkable versatility, more than any rock band before or since, Queen could literally do it all – and here, on one album, was the ultimate proof. There would be many more masterful albums to come from Queen over the next 20 years, but here, perhaps, was the band at its 1970s musical apotheosis.

Recalling when Freddie sat at the piano and first played ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ to him and the band, producer Roy Thomas Baker says, “Freddie set out three impressive verses then stopped and said, ‘Now dear, this is where the opera section comes in’.” That was when Baker started smiling and, by his own recent recollections, he hardly stopped smiling for the rest of the session – arduous though it was in pre-digital days to stack up the 180-voice ‘chorus’ (all Mercury/May/Taylor vocals) over seven 12-hour days. “Bohemian Rhapsody was totally insane,” he said. “We never stopped laughing. It was basically a joke, but a successful joke.”
But it was worth it. ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ spent nine consecutive weeks at No.1 and became the only single to sell more a million copies on two separate occasions, and was named recently in the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles as the top song of the last 50 years.

‘A Night At The Opera’ was also the first Queen album to go to No.1 in the UK, where it sold over a million copies, giving them their first platinum record. It was their breakthrough album in the USA, where it reached No.4 and remained on the charts for 52 weeks, giving them their first gold record in the States.

A landmark release, this special edition features both the new CD and DVD formats of the album completely restored from original analogue tapes and digitally re-mastered by Bob Ludwig, in both stereo and 5.1 surround sound. As well as the original 1975 videos for ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and ‘You’re My Best Friend’, the DVD also contains brand new video footage for the other 10 tracks, along with archive audio commentary from all four members of Queen, including the late Freddie Mercury.

Says Brian May : “This DVD also features for the first time visuals for every track on the album – some, like the original ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ video, carefully digitally restored and re-graded, and some, like the stunning new video for ‘Good Company’, created especially for this release. There are also some special commentaries, ancient and modern, from all four Queen members on facets of the tracks, and … yes, this is quite simply the best ‘Night At The Opera’ ever produced. I doubt if it can ever be bettered!”

“Talent will out, my dears” – Freddie Mercury.

Queen - A Night At The Opera
30th Anniversary Edition
Collectors Edition
Combined CD/DVD package.
Release date: 21st November 2005

DISC ONE – CD
A Night At The Opera – studio album. Re-mastered in 5.1 surround sound and stereo for this set.
DISC TWO – DVD
A Night At The Opera – studio album presented in both DTS 5.1 Surround Sound and the re-mastered stereo mix.

Queen - A Night At The Opera
30th Anniversary Edition
Collectors Edition
Combined CD/DVD package.

Three decades ago Queen released their classic album “A Night at the Opera”, which went to No. 1 in many countries around the world, and on Monday, November 21, 1975, the first single from the album went to No.1 in the UK charts, a position it was to hold for 9 weeks.

Queen commemorate the 30th anniversary of this historic occasion – on Monday, November 21 2005 - with a new combined CD/DVD Special Collectors Edition release of the album.

‘A Night At The Opera’ is now regarded by many to be the definitive ’70s-era Queen release. Originally recorded in no less than six different studios between August and November 1975, it was reckoned at the time to be the most expensive album ever recorded, although, at around £45,000, it now looks remarkably cheap at the price.

Their fourth album, ‘A Night At The Opera’ encapsulated everything about Queen’s music that made it so unique. Combining outstanding showmanship with remarkable versatility, more than any rock band before or since, Queen could literally do it all – and here, on one album, was the ultimate proof. There would be many more masterful albums to come from Queen over the next 20 years, but here, perhaps, was the band at its 1970s musical apotheosis.

Before they started recording Freddie Mercury was telling everyone about his eagerness to “experiment” and “go to greater extremes”. In fact, the whole band was fired up, having just escaped from a management deal which had led to disenchantment – vigorously expressed in Mercury’s song ‘Death On Two Legs’. Released after some lawyerly discussion regarding libel law, the album showed Queen relishing their new freedom.

“We had time to write and I think we had something special,” said Brian May. “We said, this can be our ‘Sgt. Pepper’.” They had it all, indeed, from the all-out raunch of ‘Death On Two Legs’ and ‘I’m In Love With My Car’, to the sophisticated balladry of ‘.39’ and ‘Love Of My Life’, the playful, breezy pop of ‘You’re My Best Friend’ (a Top 10 hit which helped make the album a huge hit all over the world), and ‘Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon’, and, perhaps most remarkable of all, the heavy choral/operatic spectaculars of ‘The Prophet’s Song’ and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.

Recalling when Freddie sat at the piano and first played ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ to him and the band, producer Roy Thomas Baker says, “Freddie set out three impressive verses then stopped and said, ‘Now dear, this is where the opera section comes in’.” That was when Baker started smiling and, by his own recent recollections, he hardly stopped smiling for the rest of the session – arduous though it was in pre-digital days to stack up the 180-voice ‘chorus’ (all Mercury/May/Taylor vocals) over seven 12-hour days. “Bohemian Rhapsody was totally insane,” he said. “We never stopped laughing. It was basically a joke, but a successful joke.”

Notoriously, the process nearly had the old technology beaten. “We ran the tape through so many times it kept wearing out,” said May. “Once we held it up to the light and could see straight through it, the music had practically vanished. We transferred it in a hurry. Strange business – holding on to this elusive sound signal which gradually disappeared as we created it. Every time we decided to add a few more harmony parts we lost something too.”

But it was worth it. ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ spent nine consecutive weeks at No.1 and became the only single to sell more a million copies on two separate occasions, and was named recently in the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles as the top song of the last 50 years.

‘A Night At The Opera’ was also the first Queen album to go to No.1 in the UK, where it sold over a million copies, giving them their first platinum record. It was their breakthrough album in the USA, where it reached No.4 and remained on the charts for 52 weeks, giving them their first gold record in the States.

A landmark release, this special edition features both the new CD and DVD formats of the album completely restored from original analogue tapes and digitally re-mastered by Bob Ludwig, in both stereo and 5.1 surround sound. As well as the original 1975 videos for ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and ‘You’re My Best Friend’, the DVD also contains brand new video footage for the other 10 tracks, along with archive audio commentary from all four members of Queen, including the late Freddie Mercury.

As Queen guitarist Brian May explains in the new liner notes: “Months of craftsmanship by true perfectionists have gone into wringing every ounce out of the original master recordings and into this hitherto unequalled ‘high definition’ domain. Never has the recording been so carefully balanced, so carefully cleansed of clicks and pops from so many sources, some of which were even present on the original mix master tapes. In the stereo sound on this DVD, every nuance of the analogue character of these human-made mixes is more faithfully reproduced here than ever before. In addition, for the surround track, a whole set of 5.1 mixes has been created from microscopically accurate digital sound files, mirroring the original multitrack tapes. For the first time this includes a new surround mix of the final track ‘God Save the Queen’, and some improvements to the surround mixes previously issued to a small audience on the DTS DVD-Audio release.”

May continues: “This DVD also features for the first time visuals for every track on the album – some, like the original ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ video, carefully digitally restored and re-graded, and some, like the stunning new video for ‘Good Company’, created especially for this release. There are also some special commentaries, ancient and modern, from all four Queen members on facets of the tracks, and … yes, this is quite simply the best ‘Night At The Opera’ ever produced. I doubt if it can ever be bettered!”

Simon Lupton, who co-produced the DVD, explains the painstaking process behind the making of the new videos for the album: “We decided to use footage from concerts that were filmed as close to that era as possible. The concert footage you see here is mainly from Earls Court and Houston in 1977. Both concerts were filmed but, for various reasons, never made available commercially.”

Lupton continues: “We were lucky in that, more than most groups of their era, Queen understood the value of putting on really good visually-oriented performances whenever they appeared on TV or had their shows filmed. They really were ahead of their time in that respect. As much effort went into their live performance and creating a piece of entertainment for people as went into making the actual music.”

The only track not using footage from that era is ‘Love Of My Life’. Says Lupton: “It’s an unusual track in that it’s probably one of their most famous songs that was never a hit single. But it’s one that was adopted by the fans and that became a very key moment in all their live shows subsequently, where the audience didn’t just sing along but would actually do most of the singing with Freddie conducting them through it. So, in that respect, it is one of those Queen songs that is timeless. We also wanted to show the sheer size of the crowds they used to play to. When you see just how many thousands of people there would be connecting with the band on that song it really is quite extraordinary.”

Other highlights include the track ‘’39’, which combines footage of Brian May singing and playing the song at the band’s show in Sheffield earlier this year with original ’70s footage. Lupton: “It was Brian’s idea to mix things up because the song itself is about time travel. And because they originally only used to do one verse and chorus from it, Brian, who wrote it, liked the idea of him singing the song now, interspersed with the old footage.”

Lupton goes on to explain how both May and drummer Roger Taylor helped develop all the ideas for the new videos. “Myself and my co-producer, Rhys Thomas, came up with ideas for each of the videos, then sent those over for the guys to look at on paper. Brian and Roger then both came back with suggestions of their own. We would then put together rough edits of the videos, take it to them, and they would make further suggestions based on where we were with the editing. Then we would come back with the finished ones. So it went back and forth throughout the whole process.”

Simon says the classic example was ‘The Prophet Song’s’. “For me, it was really a key moment on the album. If it hadn’t been on the same album as ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ it would probably be better known now than it is and I’m very pleased with what we were able to do with that because it’s an amazing piece of work.”

This video includes “this rather bizarre instrument called a Koto, which Brian was originally given a toy version of on the band’s earliest tour of Japan. He was able to dig out the actual toy and re-record bits for the video. Even though it was only a toy, Brian liked the sound it produced and he actually plays it on the original track. So we thought it would be nice to work in a visual around it for the new video. I was amazed, actually, to discover he still had it after all these years.”

And then there is ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ itself, which, says Lupton, “apart from some colour grading and a bit of restoration work”, he was more than happy to leave as is. As he says: “It really is a seminal piece of work, very much part of video history, so to fiddle with it would be sacrilegious, really, like putting a moustache on the Mona Lisa.” Though he does point out that the version on the new DVD is actually the second version made after the single had been Number One for about a month, at which point “some small details like the flames were added.” He continues: “The original version of the ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ video was included on the ‘Greatest Video Hits Volume I’ DVD, so we thought it would be nice to include this version for the first time here.”

There are also some wonderfully evocative period photos woven seamlessly into the visuals on the DVD. Most of these were provided by long-time Queen picture archivist and sleeve designer Richard Gray, who has also designed the package for the new edition of the album and has been involved with the group for over 20 years. The pictures for ‘Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon’, however, were taken by a Japanese photographer who was commissioned to take shots of the band while they were actually working on the album.

As for the audio commentary, says Lupton, “It’s mostly period material but there are some moments from later on in their career where they’re talking about the album and we thought it would be churlish not to include them, especially as there was some very good stuff. Though it is all from the period when the band was still active with Freddie. Nothing new was recorded, in that respect.”

Of the many highlights on the DVD, Brian May says his favourite of the new videos is for ‘Good Company’. “They only performed the song once live,” Lupton explains, “And it was never filmed. Brian set us the task of finding old news footage to try and tell the story. And it was lovely because he was bowled over by the results. He said we absolutely captured the spirit of what the song was about.”

“Talent will out, my dears” – Freddie Mercury.



Queen - A Night At The Opera
30th Anniversary Edition
Collectors Edition
Combined CD/DVD package.

Release date: 21st November 2005
Barcode: 0946 3 38457 2 5
Cat No: 338 4572

DISC ONE – CD
A Night At The Opera – studio album. Re-mastered in 5.1 surround sound and stereo for this set.

DISC TWO – DVD
A Night At The Opera – studio album presented in both DTS 5.1 Surround Sound and the re-mastered stereo mix.

Death On Two Legs: New video featuring archive ‘live’ footage.
Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon: Picture Gallery featuring rare and previously unseen photos.
I’m In Love With My Car: New video featuring archive ‘live’ footage.
You’re My Best Friend: Existing 4:3 Promo
‘39: New video featuring Brian May 2005 performance at Sheffield, archive ‘live’ footage for chorus, plus 1960’s Space footage.
Sweet Lady: New video featuring archive ‘live’ footage.
Seaside Rendezvous: New video featuring archive seaside footage.
Prophets Song: New video featuring mixture of archive ‘live’ footage and exclusive new footage of Brian playing the toy Koto.
Love Of My Life: New video featuring mixture of archive ‘live’ footage and slow-mo images.
Good Company: New video featuring archive footage.
Bohemian Rhapsody: Existing 4:3 ‘flames’ promo.
God Save The Queen: New video featuring mixture of archive ‘live’ footage and “Party at the Palace” footage of Brian on the roof.

Extra Features:
Audio Commentary: Archive audio of the band discussing the songs and the recording of ANATO.

On Screen Lyrics

VINYL
Remastered album also to be available in specially packaged LP with outer envelope as per the original Japanese release.