OTTAWA (AFP).- The Montreal Opera will turn Pink Floyd's hit album "The Wall" into an opera, the troupe announced on Thursday together with one of the rock group's founding members.

The opera will debut in 2017 to mark the city's 375th anniversary, Montreal Opera representatives said at a news conference together with Pink Floyd member Roger Waters.

Waters initially dismissed the idea when first approached, he said.

"It had been my experience that experiments in collaboration between the worlds of rock and roll and the worlds of symphonic music were generally disastrous and should be embarked upon with extreme trepidation," he said. "But they were extremely persuasive."

On first hearing the music, he added: "I sat there not expecting to be moved, and I was moved. Very moved. So I approach this project with great enthusiasm."

The 1979 "concept album" explores the themes of abandonment and personal isolation in post-war Britain.

Its staging in Montreal completes a kind of full circle.

Waters conceived the album while on tour in 1977, when he was frustrated with audiences and imagined building a wall between them and the stage. During a show in Montreal, he spit on a fan rushing the stage.

The music chronicles the life of a fictional character named Pink who loses his father in World War II.

Raised by an overprotective mother, he suffers abuse by schoolteachers and later retreats from society after the breakdown of his marriage, building a metaphorical wall around himself.

Waters last toured with "The Wall" in 2010-2013, when it earned nearly half a billion dollars.



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