Hit List - A Rocker on Opera
Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, now composing arias, on classical works
By JOHN JURGENSEN, Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

A founding member of the band Pink Floyd, Roger Waters was a driving force behind the 1979 rock opera "The Wall," which has sold more than 23 million copies. Last month, Mr. Waters unveiled his work on an opera of a different sort -- a classical opera set in the French Revolution, "Ça Ira," which he spent 15 years composing. The CD debuted at No. 1 on the classical music charts and is currently in sixth place, although it has received mixed reviews from traditional opera publications.

We asked Mr. Waters to recommend opera and other classical recordings that would appeal to rock 'n' roll fans as well as opera lovers.

Giacomo Puccini, "Tosca"

Performed for the first time in 1900, this story about an opera singer and her executed lover is "particularly close to my heart," says Mr. Waters, because it's the piece that first drew him to opera. He likes a rendition by tenor Franco Correlli of an aria in the third act sung by the character Cavaradossi as he writes to his lover from prison.

Gustav Mahler, "Symphony No. 5"

Mr. Waters says he's drawn to the "shifting harmonic structure and the darkness" of this symphony, which Mahler conducted for the first time in 1904 and revised until his death seven years later.

Giacomo Puccini, "Madama Butterfly"

Mr. Waters calls the "humming chorus" in this tragic opera, a wordless song that accompanies Butterfly's second-act vigil for her husband, an "extraordinary piece of imagination."

Hector Berlioz, "Te Deum"

Best known for his "Symphony Fantastique," Berlioz conceived his version of this Christian prayer on a grand scale. It called for two adult choirs, one children's choir, an organ and a full orchestra, including 12 harps. If Berlioz had been "born 150 years later, he definitely would have been using 200-watt Marshall" amplifiers, says Mr. Waters.

Gabriel Fauré, "Requiem"

Unlike the gloomier "Requiem" that Mozart wrote on his deathbed, Fauré's composition veers toward the joyous. First performed during burial services around 1888, the composer's treatment of death, which Fauré described as a "happy deliverance," is delivered by choir and orchestra.

Our thanks to Abraham Madkour for his help with this! This interview is posted here purely for archiving purposes, and copyright remains with the originating publication.