It’s a big year for the Smashing Pumpkins. The band is celebrating three decades of their beloved album Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness with a goth Erewhon smoothie, a reissue with a 6xLP box set, and an opera with a 60-piece orchestra.
The performances with Lyric Opera orchestra and chorus are happening in the group’s hometown of Chicago, and the residency at the Civic Opera House kicked off last night. The set, which featured Corgan on only a handle of songs, reimagined 17 of the record’s 28 tracks, and “Tonight, Tonight” was performed twice. Conductor and composer James Lowe told the Chicago Sun-Times that rockers like “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” and “Jellybelly” offered more of a challenge: “It was like, what do I do with this? How do I translate that to an orchestra without it sounding kind of silly or cringey?”
Billy Corgan also talked with CBS Mornings, saying, “I’m a bit suspicious of the rock and classical thing. I don’t throw shade on the artists that have done it. It’s a cool thing. And when I talked to the Lyric, the first thing out of my mouth was, ‘I wanna voice my music for your world.'”
Below watch some footage of the show and see the setlist.
Thirty years after “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” helped make @SmashingPumpkin famous, frontman Billy Corgan is collaborating with a surprising venue, The Lyric Opera of Chicago, to stage a new interpretation of the album with a 60-piece orchestra. Corgan told… pic.twitter.com/Yi3pBptyDI
SETLIST:
01 “Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness”
02 “Tonight, Tonight”
03 “Jellybelly”
04 “Galapogos”
05 “Thirty-Three”
06 “Beautiful”
07 “Muzzle”
08 “Lily (My One and Only)”
09 “Stumbleine”
10 “Thru The Eyes Of Ruby”
11 “In The Arms Of Sleep”
12 “1979”
13 “By Starlight”
14 “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”
15 “To Forgive”
16 “Cupid De Locke”
17 “Porcelina Of The Vast Oceans”
18 “Tonight, Tonight”
