being), the performance persona (the performer’s self – presentation), and the character (a figure portrayed in a song text).’ (p.4) He states that the audience blur these layers together as ‘The demarcation line between real person and persona is always ambiguous in performance’ (p.5). He further discusses how stage names designated for the stage are then generalised to the real person. Therefore, Mercury’s westernised persona and looks on stage are assumed onto his real self which is how he has become synonymous with Britain.
Bringing communities together through a sense of Britishness
Queen’s song ‘Bohemian Rhapsody is an ‘opera-rock fusion’, two paradigms generally polarised but with striking parallels that make them compatible. The bringing together of these paradigms merges their perceived ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultural roots (McLeod, 2001, p.189). Additionally, the genres are similar because of their aspect of performance. Bohemian Rhapsody is an acting of characters blended with rock styled undertones. At the start of the song, Mercury plays a ‘suicidal young man and then switches to a devilish persona in the disruptive underground world depicted at the middle of the song’ (p.193). Queen therefore take glam rock’s performative aspect even further in a song with a theatrical narrative disrupting all conventions of a pop song at the time. In an interview with Brian May he states that opera influenced the band members. He says, ‘we [Queen] all [had] a bit of that in us when we grew up. It’s part of our English upbringing; we absorbed a lot of classical music subliminally from our parents’ (p.192). May talks about the band having a collective English upbringing again further securing their ties with the nation despite Mercury’s true ethnicity. In addition to this, he states that Opera is synonymous with English culture when it actually originated in 17th century Italy (Sorabella, 2004). As stated by Waters – ‘[i]t is useful to think of ‘globalisation’ through models of religions, networks, flows, a kind of ‘liquidity’ or mesh rather than seeing, it all, rather depressingly, as block domination by the U.S’ (2001, p.160). This theory is demonstrated in the dispersion of the operatic form which has globally distributed into different national identities without being a complete homogenisation across the world. Opera is not a dominating genre because
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Figure 5. Click on the video to play
Figure 6.
During a performance at Wembley, Mercury can be seen wearing an immitation of the royal crown and gown. Also they play the British anthem 'God Save the Queen' and thus align themselves with the prestige and patriotism that is associated with the Royal family.