These days, if you mention The Wall, people may think you’re talking about Donald Trump’s proposed barrier separating the United States from Mexico. If you travel northward into Canada, though, The Wall means something else entirely – Pink Floyd’s 1979 album The Wall is being turned into an opera. Another Brick in the Wall: The Opera is a collaboration between Opéra de Montréal and the band’s former bassist and songwriter Roger Waters. It will premiere at the Quebec opera house on 11 March and is one of a series of events meant to help celebrate the city’s 375th anniversary.

While the opportunity to transform your rock opera into an actual opera sounds hard to pass up, that’s exactly what Waters did when he was approached by the composer Julien Bilodeau and Pierre Dufour, who at the time was the executive director of the Opéra de Montréal. “I wrote them a very polite, but very firm email back saying that my experience had been that most collaborations between popular music in general, but rock’n’roll in particular, and the symphonic orchestral form were unmitigated disasters and I thought it was a terrible idea,” said Waters.

My experience had been that collaborations between popular music in general and orchestras were unmitigated disasters Roger Waters

“I got this fantastic letter back from Pierre Dufour. It was so eloquent in defense of their idea and I agreed that I would meet with them.” Dufour, Bilodeau, and the director Dominic Champagne came to New York to meet Waters, armed with preliminary set designs and operatic transformations of Pink Floyd’s hits Comfortably Numb and Another Brick in The Wall, Part 2. Waters was impressed. “We started talking and five hours later we were still talking,” he said. “After that meeting I said, ‘You know what? All right, you’ve convinced me. Let’s do it.’”

Waters joined the team, serving as librettist for the new piece, with music written by Bilodeau. The conductor Alain Trudel and Champagne will guide the Orchestre Métropolitain and Étienne Dupuis, who plays the character inspired by the rock star Pink Floyd, the fictional protagonist of the original rock opera reportedly inspired by both Waters and Pink Floyd’s original leader, Syd Barrett.



Montreal is a fitting place for the opera’s debut, as the origin story behind Pink Floyd’s The Wall started at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium in 1977, when Waters spat in the face of a fan who attempted to storm the stage. It was a move that ended the Pink Floyd concert and shocked the fan, and Waters. “It was a life-changing moment for me only insofar as my response to it made me think of how alienated I had become,” said Waters. “Suddenly a lightbulb went on and this showman in me went, ‘What about doing a rock show and building a wall between the band and the audience, as a physical expression of alienation that caused me to spit on that bloke?’”

Bob Geldof in Alan Parker’s film version of The Wall. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

The original iteration of The Wall came out in 1979 as a double album, and went on to become one of the best-selling albums of all time in the US, with 23m sales. The music and story lived on thanks to a 1982 film called Pink Floyd – The Wall, starring Bob Geldof as Pink, as well as tours, concerts, live concert films, and laser light shows across the world. “It has moved people since 1979,” said Water. “It’s cool that it struck a chord and I think it’s really great that Dominique and Julian have sort of picked up the baton and are taking it into a different genre and into the world of classical opera. It’s very flattering.”

While the story originally stemmed from Waters’ frustrations and personal struggles, now, it has changed partially in response to the current political situation – and Waters is fine with that, as he is not of fan of Trump’s divisive rhetoric. “We’re all brothers and sisters and it behooves us to discover that and then develop ways of cooperating with one another and being as kind as we can be to one another and figuring out how to make life bearable on this very small, insignificant, fragile planet that we call home,” said Waters.

Waters, who envisioned a dystopian future in The Wall (or at least the film version of it), filled with nightmarish scenarios of a dictator leading a neo-Nazi rally, is alarmed by what he sees as Trump’s despotic tendencies. “Any despot, whenever they build a monument to themselves, whether it’s Ceaușescu, or Saddam Hussein, or Donald Trump, they always look exactly the same. Weirdly, these people have bits missing from their sensibility, so it’s almost as if they build the monument to themselves from a despot catalog and it’s always full of marble and gold taps,” said Waters. “[Look at] Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York City. It’s perfect. Trump with his gold taps and his all of that. It’s the perfect symbol of everything we need to steer clear of.”



Waters is also alarmed by Trump’s disregard for facts. “The Americans have just elected somebody to power in this country, the president, who does not believe in climate change. He believes it’s an invention, he doesn’t believe in it,” said Waters. “That’s the end of the story. He thinks it’s something that people have made up, and he managed to convince a number of other people of that, just by stating it. You just state it. You state the big lie often enough and people will believe it. Who said that? Joseph Goebbels.”

While politics are on his mind, Waters isn’t slowing his creative output. As the opera prepares to take the stage, Waters is hard at work mining The Wall for new material. There might be another theatrical production, or a film, or a stripped-down stage show that Waters workshopped with students from a music school. “You will weep,” he said.

“You will, because it is fundamental to all of our experiences that we’re sick of our men and women being slaughtered on the altar of avarice and commerce, which is what they are being slaughtered on the altar of,” said Waters. “War isn’t about ideology, it’s not about religion. It’s about money. It’s always been about money. It’s about money and power and it is devastatingly sad to see the human race feeling compelled to march further down the road towards ultimate destruction.”

“The holy grail is love,” Waters continued. “That is what we should be promoting and protecting with every ounce of energy we all have.”

Another Brick in the Wall opens at the Opéra de Montréal on 11 March