So why did Roger Waters rejoin Pink Floyd for Live 8? Was it the sense of occasion? The putting away of petty squabbles for a greater cause. Maybe he discovered that Nick Mason hadn’t after all pranged his car in the street. All of these are possible, as is the possibililty that it give him a little bit of extra publicity for his new opera.
You read that right.
Opera.
Anyone who has ever suffered through The Pros & Cons Of Hitch-Hiking or (shudder) Radio Kaos, will be well aware that Mr Waters grasp of narrative is shaky at best. So just as well that Ca Ira is an operatic history of the French Revolution, which comes with an in-built, if messy, narrative. Nevertheless it is an idea which reeks of the type of self-aggrandisement and Floyd nonsense that the Live 8 performance almost put to rest (for some people, if not others).
If only he had spent more time working on the title. Instead of Ca Ira, he could have called it Ci Ara, and then it would have at least had a sure-fire, if not strictly operatic, hit like Goodies in it.