Style: Heavy metal, prog rock, theatre soundtrack (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Saimaa, Area, Mike Oldfield, Premiata Forneria Marconi, Unitopia
Country: Italy
Review by: Christopher
Release date: 10 January 2025
A hundred restless figures in a cramped auditorium, a gentle hum of conversation and the occasional cough; nervously excited parents rifling through the program. This year, the ambitious new drama teacher has gone all out, and the kids are performing a musical version of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Bake sales have funded the production design: some parents have been working on papier-mâché stalagmites and stalactites for Caliban’s cave, and buckets of brown paint have been slapped onto the ship backdrop for the opening scene. The crowd hushes as the drama teacher steps onstage to give an introductory speech, and the Shakespeare fans in the audience itch for their first sight of the Boatswain and the Shipmaster. The two characters do indeed step out at the play’s opening, but what isn’t expected is the four grown men in a makeshift orchestra pit hammering out an Iron Maiden-esque overture that wobbles the set enough that it really does seem like the ship’s in a storm. As The Bard himself would say: if music be the food of love, then open up this fucking pit.
Yes, here to steal the thunder from the it girl playing Miranda, and your own kid who got lumped with the curtain puller job is Italian prog metal outfit Opera Nera. Shakespeare’s original play contained songs for the players to perform, and the band lift their lyrics from these to reimagine them as if The Bard had been into rock operas, which he obviously would’ve been. Some tracks take their lyrics from other parts of the text (“This Island is Mine”, for example, borrows from a Caliban soliloquy), and others act as instrumental soundtrack or incidental music. In essence, Opera Nera’sThe Tempest is conceptualised not as a complete piece in and of itself, but as an accompaniment to a stage performance, an extra dimension of the play, to expand Prospero’s island.
“Hell is Empty” opens with lines from Caliban, the enslaved savage—‘Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not’—before the band bring out their twangling instruments and deliver a heavy metal aria. Power chords and duelling leads with a somewhat warbling quality, plus a solo section which, at one juncture, appears to homage Avenged Sevenfold’s “Afterlife” make for a rather generic start, and the production is instantly apparent as a weak point. Around half the tracks are rooted in a simple eighties style of heavy metal, shades of Iron Maiden, Dio, that sort of thing, but lacking somewhat in execution. “This Island is Mine” employs Dino Jelusick-esque gravelly belting while “Beseech, you sir, be merry” consists of little more than some chugs and a solo; there’s ultimately not much to say about these tracks because they don’t develop any ideas. Most are five lines of Shakespeare and a riff with an average song length of just over two minutes—such is the lot of music made for a play that isn’t actually a musical. However, there’s another side to Opera Nera, some unexpected flourishes which actually elevate their sound.
If half of The Tempest is metal, the other half is some rather bold genre experimentation. “Flaut‘em and Scout‘em” [sic] goes for a clean guitar funk groove and wild sax solo, “You are Three Men of Sins” evolves from psychedelic chilled-out electronica in the vein of Air into a sort of Primus-esque chaos—given the lyrics are drawn from a pretty tense and climactic scene, this level of whimsy seems somewhat at odds with the play’s content but I’m no theatre critic. Meanwhile, “Lu capitano in testa” is an impromptu sojourn into full-blown Neapolitan folk (to reflect the character of Stefano who is described as a Neapolitan in the play and drawing upon a Neapolitan translation of the text for the lyrics), and “Come Unto These Yellow Sands” boldly attempts vocal harmonisation and clean guitar in the vein of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (ending with comical abruptness; the noise gates Opera Nera use are undeniably a problem). The jewel of the genre-hopping, however, is “Reaper’s Dance”, seven minutes of out-and-out trance that reprise the addictive ‘Ban, ‘Ban, Ca-Caliban’ chant from the track of that name of which it’s essentially a remix handled by guest musician, Pier Paolo Polcari. I don’t know about you, but I think all Shakespeare adaptations should have at least seven uninterrupted minutes of rave music.
Herein lies the most bizarre problem afflicting Opera Nera: their stopovers in other genres are far more successful than their progressive metal which is, at best, bland, poorly produced rock opera clichés. On the other hand, “Reaper’s Dance” is unironically sick but it’s broadly the work of composer Pier Paolo Polcari (who’s worked with Massive Attack, which really explains the insane quality jump), just as “Lu capitano in testa” is mostly the work of guest musician Lino Vairetti. While the attempt at folk on “Come Unto These Yellow Sands” is admirable, with no expert to guide them, Opera Nera falter. The band’s strongest ideas are either carried by skilled guest musicians or fall prey to the band’s triumvirate of problems: poor production, undercooked compositions, and an unfortunate lack of skill. As a work that could theoretically accompany a production of The Tempest, this is an intriguing, ambitious and serviceable project as well as a unique undertaking for the progressive scene, but on most other metrics Opera Nera fall well short of muster.
Prospero intones his final lines, and the curtain falls as an ominous string quartet plays (“All the Devils Are Here”). The parents give a standing ovation, and the little actors take a bow. The families file out, their little Thespians in tow and head out towards the car park. Loading their instruments into a van are Opera Nera who were never invited up onstage and so, unlike Prospero, never received the audience’s applause to set them free. “You were great tonight, sweetie,” beams a proud mother walking past with her son, and a little sense of yearning jolts through the watching musicians. Behind his wife and daughter comes the proud father, singing a little ditty to himself: “Flout ‘em and scout ‘em, and scout ‘em and flout ‘em”, he croons tunelessly. And perhaps that’s enough for these sirs to be cheerful, even though our revels now are ended.
Final verdict: 5/10
Review by: Francesco
Since practically the dawn of civilization, grandiose epic concepts have been a staple of storytelling. And with the advent of the written word, the most popular form has been the literary form—between technological innovations and the evolution of the pop culture sphere, these epic tales and poems have been passed on in various media, very recently growing to include progressive rock and heavy metal. In 1977, Rush wrote “Xanadu”, a direct adaptation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”—likely the earliest song explicitly based on an epic poem—setting it to grand, atmospheric prog music. Certainly a huge influence on epic metal storytelling, it was later followed by arguably the most popular and definitive metal music piece based on an epic literary work; another work of Coleridge’s, in fact – “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, by Iron Maiden off their 1984 album Powerslave. Later oeuvres would include Blind Guardian’s interpretation of The Iliad and The Aeneid with “And Then There Was Silence”, and its counterpart “The Odyssey” by Symphony X. And if you fancy a bit of Shakespeare, perhaps? Well, to my knowledge, there are only a few: Rebellion’s Shakespeare’s Macbeth: A Tragedy in Steel (2002) and King Lear (2018), Anarchÿ’s The Spectrum of Human Emotion (2022) which was based on Hamlet, and the focus of this review: Italians Opera Nera and The Tempest—based off the play of the same name. To make an analogy; if Rebellion’s works were expressionist paintings, and Anarchÿ’s Spectrum was baroque, then Opera Nera’s The Tempest would be a child splattering the wall with finger paints.
Ostensibly The Tempest was written as musical accompaniment to the play, and many of the tracks contain lyrics that are directly pulled from Shakespeare’s work. Introducing The Tempest with a line from Act III, Scene II, ‘Be not afeard…’ and transitioning into an ‘80s metal harmonized guitar track, Opera Nera immediately invites comparisons to Iron Maiden—and while there are certainly elements of heavy metal on this album, to suggest that the entire album is like this would not only be untrue, it would also be setting you up, dear reader, for disappointment. From the ‘60s psychedelic ballad in “Come unto these yellow sands”, to soft piano with vocal accompaniment in “My Master through his art”, and back to a heavy metal sound with “This island is mine”, Opera Nera often ventures off into genre territories so vastly different from one another you’ll need a map and compass to find your place. And that’s barely the half of it. It’s certainly very artsy, and yes, progressive music can be about pushing boundaries—but I think it’s wise to have direction, and that’s something I felt The Tempest was sorely lacking.
The way The Tempest (the album, not the play) bounces around different ideas is jarring and gives the impression of an incomplete, or rather, unfinished work. The idea to make this a heavy metal album would have been one of the better creative decisions on this release, if it had not been left unexplored fully; instead, we get seven minutes of abysmal vocal trance music (“Reaper’s Dance”), a minute-and-a-half of funk-soul-jazz (“Flout ‘em and scout ‘em”), and whatever the fuck you call the two-and-a-half minutes of “Ban Ban Ca Caliban”. The best part of this album was the Neapolitan-language folk music of “Lu Capitanu in testa”. Why couldn’t they make a Neapolitan folk metal album instead? There’s just as much a lack of those as there are conceptual Neapolitan Shakespearean prog albums, and evidently they have more a knack for it than much of whatever else is on this album.
Opera Nera’s Spotify biography reads “trying to experiment with formats in a metal key” and of the fourteen tracks on The Tempest, beside “Hell is empty”, “Beseech you, sir, be merry”, “This island is mine”, and “Yo, elves of hills” (which was intended to be “you elves”, making it accidentally the funniest title on the album), there was no other metal or metal-adjacent sonority to be found. Frankly, I would struggle to consider this a prog metal or prog rock album. It’s some type of abstract expressionist avant-garde musical concept album with everything from jazz to psychedelia to trance thrown at the wall just to see what sticks. It was probably one of the most absurd things I’ve heard in a while. Ragazzi, ma per cortesia. You are four men of sins.
Recommended tracks: Reaper’s Dance, Lu capitano in testa, Hell is Empty
You may also like: Osanna, Whom Gods Destroy
Final verdict: 3/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Instagram
Label: Independent
Opera Nera is:
– Marco Napolitano (guitars)
– Alessandro Pacella (bass)
– Eduardo Spada (drums)
– Tiziano Spigno (vocals)
