Led Zeppelin bassist writing an opera
10 June 2013, 11:58 | Updated: 18 September 2014, 14:50
John Paul Jones, bassist with legendary rock band Led Zeppelin, has revealed that he has begun work on writing a full-scale opera.
Jones said that he was writing an opera in an interview after the premiere of Philip Glass' opera The Perfect American. Though he is renowned for his musical ability and he has tackled film scores before, he admitted that the challenge of writing an opera might be something different.
"It’s unlike anything else. It’s the emotion, the passion," he told Red Carpet TV News. He added that the main challenge of writing such a work would be "the sheer scale of it, I think. I don’t know. I’m probably about to find out what the challenges are." He also said that he is currently about half-way through the first act.
Jones' opera is based on the Swedish playwright August Strindberg's chamber play 'The Ghost Sonata', in which a young student in Stockholm is subject to a variety of bizarre experiences, including a woman being transformed into a mummy.
Previously, the bassist has composed music for the movie The Secret Adventures Of Tom Thumb, and was notable in Led Zeppelin for being a proficient multi-instrumentalist. The band famously reunited in 2007 for a brief time, and further reunions are the subject of much speculation.
