Hollywood Bowl, Los AngelesWith its ramshackle delivery, halting Bible readings and thunderous choir, Nebuchadnezzar is an outlandish, self-regarding spectacle
Rock and pop artists tend to tread very carefully around the issue of classical music. Paul McCartney waited for 30 years of his career to pass – by which time he was thoroughly established as one half of the most successful songwriting partnership in history – before presenting his first oratorio to the world. Billy Joel and Elvis Costello similarly allowed 30 years to elapse before announcing that they had written classical pieces. Even Roger Waters, a man so untroubled by the concept of modesty he bills himself as a “creative genius” on the adverts for his gigs, spent 28 years working on his opera Ca Ira before presenting it to the public.
You can understand their reticence – the classical establishment is sniffy, even brutal, about pop artists chancing their arm in the world of chamber orchestras, librettos and movements in C minor – but they’re not made of the same stuff as
Kanye West, who blithely announced he’d written an opera, which would be premiering at the 17,500-capacity
Hollywood Bowl in seven days’ time, a couple of weeks after releasing his album Jesus Is King.