Avantasia

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Avantasia (The Metal Opera) is a two-part metal opera album written by Tobias Sammet, vocalist and frontman of the power metal group Edguy. The project's title is a mixture of the words Avalon and Fantasia (fantasy) and describes "a world beyond human imagination" (a quotation from the booklet). The project consists of two CDs containing 23 pieces, which tell a fictional story about a Dominican monk, Gabriel, in the early 17th century.

1 Development
2 Music
3 Plot
4 Religion in Avantasia
5 Cast
6 Tracklists
7 External links

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Development

In Spring 1999, during Edguy's Theatre of Salvation tour, Tobias Sammet began to write down his ideas for a metal opera, a concept album with many guest musicians. When the tour was finished, he carried this plan out, recruiting well-known metal players like Kai Hansen and the ex-Helloween singer Michael Kiske. In 2000, the first EP with the name Avantasia - The Metal Opera was released. The project was completed in September 2002 with the release of The Metal Opera Pt. II.

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Music

The album is described as a "Metal Opera" because it has an underlying plot and because each role has its own singer, but it's no opera in the normal definition. It's merely a collection of pieces, which refer to the individual points of the plot which can be read in the booklet.

From a stylistic view, the greatest part of the pieces is melodic power metal together with a voluminous sound and many orchestral passages, which is the reason Avantasia is often regarded as symphonic power metal. With Inside and Quest there also exist two songs which are almost only accompanied by piano. The first part also contains three short instrumental pieces.

The most complex piece is the first song of the second part, The Seven Angels. This song lasts over 14 minutes and contains a classical "stanza/refrain" part, two guitar solos, choirs, a song-passage with piano accompaniment, and a breathtaking finale. Seven of the eleven singers are singing in this piece.

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Plot

The main character of the story is the young Gabriel Laymann, novice of the Dominican order in the abbey of Mainz. It's in the year 1602, and together with the rest of the order, Gabriel takes part in the witch hunts. But when he is unexpectedly reunited with stepsister Anna Held, while she is waiting to be tried as a witch, Gabriel begins to doubt. He sneaks into the library, where he reads a forbidden book. His mentor Bruder Jakob notices him, and Gabriel is thrown into the dungeon.

There he meets an old man, Lugaid Vandroiy, who introduces himself as a druid (Reach Out For The Light). He tells Gabriel about another dimension, the world Avantasia, which is in great danger. He offers to help rescue Anna if Gabriel agrees to help Avantasia. They manage to escape (Breaking Away), and Vandroiy takes Gabriel to an old stone pit, which hides a portal between the two dimensions, and uses it to send Gabriel to Avantasia.

In the meantime, Johann Adam von Bicken, the bishop of Mainz, Bruder Jakob and the bailiff Falk von Kronberg are on their way towards Rome to meet the pope Clement VIII (Glory of Rome). With them they have the book Gabriel read. Old documents tell that the book is the last of seven parts of a seal, which will help its owner to absolute wisdom if he brings it to the tower in the center of Avantasia.

When Gabriel arrives in Avantasia (Avantasia) he is welcomed by two inhabitants, the elf Elderane and the dwarf Regrin (Inside). They tell him about a war against the forces of evil, of the pope's plan and its consequences (Sign Of The Cross). If the pope uses the seal, the link between Avantasia and the human world will break down with grievous consequences for both worlds. Gabriel arrives just in time at the tower, and while the pope talks to a mysterious voice from the inside, Gabriel manages to steal the seal and, in the chaos he causes, to bring it back into the elvish city (The Tower), which marks the end of the first part.

But Gabriel isn't satisfied yet. He wants to find out more about Avantasia, and so Elderane sends him to the tree of knowledge. There Gabriel has a vision of Bruder Jakob who endures great pain in a lake of flames (The Final Sacrifice). Elderane tells him about a great golden chalice in the catacombs in Rome, in which a numberless amount of tortured souls are trapped, and warns him of a beast that guards the chalice. In spite of the elf trying to discourage them, Gabriel and Regrin go back into the human world. They find the chalice and knock it over, so that many souls can escape (Chalice of Agony). The beast awakes and attacks both of them; the dwarf is killed but Gabriel manages to flee.

Afterwards, Gabriel comes back to Vandroiy, who has been waiting for him. The druid now fulfills his part and sneaks into the prison by night to free Anna. There he finds a "refined" Bruder Jakob who plans to do the same. Falk von Kronberg, who has been having doubts of his own (Memory), catches them and approaches in order to arrest them. It comes to a fight in which Kronberg kills Vandroiy and then is slain by Bruder Jakob. Anna can escape and is reunited with Gabriel, and they go together into their unknown future (Into The Unknown).

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Religion in Avantasia

Christendom and the Catholic Church play an important role in the plot. Men of the Church like Clement VIII are criticised for thinking that they hold the only truth and that they have to keep the normal people ignorant for their own good, not realising that the Church men themselves are too blinkered to recognise the truth. Criticism like this appears very often in Sammet's works: many Edguy songs like "The Kingdom" (1996) or "Theater of Salvation" (1999) contain themes, plot and dialogue very similar to those found in Avantasia.

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