And just last year, the memorable album The Human Equation was performed as a full theatrical production with the title The Theater Equation. Incorporating ambitious songwriting and extravagant storytelling, Ayreon has also utilised a wide and impressive array of guest vocalists from the world of heavy metal to create the voices of the various characters involved, with contributions from members of Within Temptation, Stratovarious, Lacuna Coil, Nightwish, Dream Theater, and even Devin Townsend and Bruce Dickinson. As the years have passed and music has become heavier, it is perhaps not surprising that several metal musicians have been drawn to the format, one obvious example being Arjen Anthony Lucassen, whose project Ayreon has produced numerous albums in a rock/metal opera format. Of course, as well as drawing upon classical elements, Indigo maintains the storytelling techniques inherent to all opera, including the ‘rock opera’, a tradition born in the late sixties and early seventies thanks to works like Tommy by The Who. I have talked with several fans of mine who learned to love metal after mostly listening to classical music and the same goes vice versa.” In my classical concerts and also in my rock concerts, there is a certain mix of people from older generation music lovers to young ones. “You can always find super-purists in everything in life,” she adds, “but from my experience people are in general much more open-minded than we tend to imagine. The biggest challenge for me is to be able to combine a pop/rock tune with classical vocals and arrangements, including a heavy band with distorted guitars, and still have space for choirs, soundtrack-like ambient sounds and keyboards. If I managed to do so, time and listeners will tell. What I am trying to do is to combine music styles, precisely not to cross from one to another, but completely erase the borders between them. “In my case, I don’t see myself doing that, I don’t actually want to do that. “It is very common to hear the label ‘crossover’ to identify the artists that are capable to cross over music styles,” she admits. Within her solo career and, most famously, as part of Nightwish, the classically-trained singer Tarja Turunen has undoubtedly helped popularise the concept of operatic metal, paving the way for numerous other acts featuring symphonic traits and an operatic approach to vocals. It’s much cooler to make a flute player play heavy metal music and see how that sounds – that should be quite fresh.”Īpocalyptica are of course not the only musicians to have worked extensively in both of these musical cultures. We wanted to skip the traditional heavy metal instruments because that would have been too obvious. I would rather call this a hybrid it happens in a traditional opera hall and the music that the people are playing is in a traditional form but is very influenced by our musical personalities, which includes a lot of powerful things from heavy metal – banging even, that rhythmical. “That suggests that the two things are separate and we put them together. “In our case I wouldn’t talk about ‘crossover’,” considers Perttu. Apocalyptica's Eicca Toppinen (Image credit: Getty)
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