Rock opera

In an early use of the term, the July 4, 1966, edition of RPM Magazine (published in Toronto) reported that "Bruce Cockburn and Mr [William] Hawkins are working on a Rock Opera, operating on the premise that to write you need only 'something to say'.

[4] Colin Fleming of The Atlantic described The Story of Simon Simopath (1967) by British psychedelic band Nirvana as an "early foray into the rock opera sub-genre".

The Tommy album developed into other media, including a Seattle Opera production in 1971, an orchestral version by Lou Reizner in 1972, a film in 1975, and a Broadway musical in 1992.

[10] A rock opera that experienced commercial recording and Broadway success is Jesus Christ Superstar (1970), written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, and in respect of which Lloyd Webber said "the piece was written as a rock album from the outset and set out from the start to tell the story through the music itself.

"[11] In 1972, David Bowie released the rock opera The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

The album's producer, Jim Steinman, coined the term Wagnerian rock after composer Richard Wagner to describe the genre of the record.

[20] The album tells the story of Nicholas, a man getting flashbacks from a previous life, as he undergoes hypnosis sessions to recall the memories of Victoria, a young girl who he discovers was murdered as a violent result of a love affair.

[22] Responding to accusations that rock operas are pretentious and overblown, Pete Townshend wrote that pop music by its very nature rejects such characteristics and is an inherently simple form.

[24] The performance of these works on Broadway has also courted controversy; Anne Midgette of The New York Times called them musicals with "no more than the addition of a keyboard and a drum set".