Avantasia - The Flying Opera: Around The World In 20 Days LIVE (2011)

As one of the best Symphonic Power Metal projects in the world, Avantasia is one of our favorite bands and we anxiously waited for this live release. However, we only got the promo for the CD tracks and they don’t really show (in our opinions) the real sound of Avantasia.

We all love the brilliant production and the countless guest appearances in the albums, but somehow in the live setting we get a much stripped down version of Avantasia. Having a less bombastic and more straight-forward sound, “The Flying Opera” mostly showcases Tobias Sammet’s singing abilities and some pretty solid Heavy Metal tracks.

While most songs are ‘Heavy Metal’ versions of Avantasia’s songs, it is nice to hear some of the guest appearances in the live setting, like Amanda Somerville-Scharf in “Lost in Space”. However, this and a few other appearances pale in comparison to what we hear on the albums, and this is mainly the reason why we can’t really respect this release.

Don’t get us wrong, the band does a great job in bringing to life amazing songs like “Farewell”, “Twisted Mind”, “The Scarecrow”, and many others. But as our preference, we prefer the bands to bring everything live or stay home and record ‘studio magic’ releases.

The ‘full’ version of this release includes 4 disks, and a lot of DVD and video footage to make hard-core fans go crazy. We can’t really say much about them (since we didn’t get them), but from the clips we have seen in youtube, it looks like an impressive show. If you are a fan of the band, you can’t miss this great release. However, if you are a ‘purist’ and want your music to be very accurate and very similar to the original recordings, I recommend you to stick to the studio albums.

Release: June 7th, 2011

Country: Germany