Queen – A Night At The Opera

Queen's A Night at the Opera arrived in November 1975 as the band's fourth studio album and, at the time, the most expensive album ever recorded. Named after the Marx Brothers film, it was the record that turned Queen's appetite for scale into something fully formed: a set that topped the UK Albums Chart, reached No. 4 in the US, and became the band's first platinum album there. More than a hit vehicle, it was the album that fixed Queen's reputation for treating the studio like a stage.

What still makes it such a rewarding listen is how deliberately varied it is. Queen fold hard rock, music hall, balladry, progressive rock and outright theatricality into one sequence without sanding off the personality of any of it. Freddie Mercury's biting opener "Death on Two Legs," John Deacon's warm, melodic "You're My Best Friend," and the suite-like sweep of "The Prophet's Song" show just how broad the writing was across the band, while Brian May, Roger Taylor and Deacon all leave a distinct mark as players and songwriters.

Of course, A Night at the Opera also houses "Bohemian Rhapsody," the song that became Queen's biggest UK single to that point and helped define how ambitious a rock single could be. But the album's appeal runs deeper than one classic: from the folk-sci-fi turn of "'39" to the mock-vaudeville charm elsewhere on the record, this is Queen at their most playful, meticulous and musically expansive. The 2015 vinyl edition brings that famously lavish album back in a gatefold presentation.

Features

• Half-Speed Mastered series edition
• Gatefold sleeve

Reviews

• No punches pulled, no expense spared: A Night at the Opera was Queen at the top of the mountain. - Pitchfork
• a self-consciously ridiculous and overblown hard rock masterpiece - AllMusic.com