Smashing Pumpkins’ classics get full symphonic treatment

Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan has teamed up with the Lyric Opera of Chicago for a concert series reimagining the band’s landmark 1995 album “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” as an operatic spectacle. At the premiere of “A Night of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness” at the Civic Opera House, Corgan and the Lyric Opera Orchestra delivered sweeping new arrangements of hits including “Tonight, Tonight,” “1979” and “Bullet With Butterfly Wings,” Rolling Stone reports. Fan-shot footage shows Corgan on guitar and vocals surrounded by a full chorus, as operatic soloists take turns on the album’s most dramatic lines. The project marks a rare crossover between 1990s alternative rock and grand opera, timed to the record’s 30th anniversary.

The production is conducted by James Lowe, who worked closely with Corgan on the orchestrations. Lyric Opera soloists Sydney Mancasola, Zoie Reams, Dominick Chenes and Edward Parks share the spotlight, turning familiar melodies into arias and ensemble pieces. For longtime fans, the new treatment adds layers of strings, brass and choral harmonies while keeping the songs’ core emotional punch. “Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage,” the famous line from “Bullet With Butterfly Wings,” now arrives after a long, brooding orchestral build-up that leans fully into the drama. The run is expected to draw both opera regulars and rock fans who might be walking into an opera house for the first time, testing how far genre boundaries can stretch when a beloved album is treated like a modern song cycle.

How a 1990s rock album became opera

Corgan has said in earlier statements that revisiting “Mellon Collie” with an opera company has allowed him to rediscover his own compositions in “powerful new ways.” The album, which sprawls across moods from orchestral ballads to heavy riffs, already carried a cinematic scope when it first arrived in the mid-1990s. Translating that into a staged concert with full orchestra and chorus arguably completes an evolution that fans sensed decades ago. For Lyric Opera, the collaboration fits into a broader push to bring new audiences into the classical hall by pairing canonical works with pop-culture experiments.

The Chicago performances land at a time when many bands are repackaging classic albums through anniversary tours, deluxe reissues and documentary films. This project stands out by treating a rock record almost like a 19th-century song cycle, inviting listeners to hear melodies and lyrics in a new acoustic space. Early reactions online suggest that some purists will always prefer the raw crunch of the original recordings, but others relish the chance to experience familiar songs with an orchestra vibrating through the room. Whether or not the experiment inspires similar crossovers elsewhere, it underlines how albums that defined a generation are now being re-staged for new formats—and new ears.