Embed and breakfast man: Broken Social Scene

Unions of pop and opera aren't entirely well-starred; Macca turning up with his Liddypool Oratorio Wacker; Elton John wearing a wig; that Passengers thing with U2 and Pavarotti.

Here's something a bit more successful: Broken Social Scene playing a benefit with, and for, the Canadian Opera Company.

You'd have thought that the only musicians in worse need of cash than opera musicians would be indie musicians, which makes the gesture even more generous.

[via Pitchfork]

U2: Spiderman, Spiderman, does... what-evah

Bono and The Edge has been talking about the Spiderman musical like it isn't a financial nightmare.

Sorry, did I say musical? Oh, hush my mouth:

The guitarist was keen not to describe the production, directed by Julie Taymor, as a musical, but rather an "opera".

And what makes the musical not a musical but an opera?

Now, you or I might answer this question "generally, an opera will be sung throughout, while a musical has dialogue; and in a musical the characters will dance." But The Edge seems to use a separate distinction, which is "if I am involved, the show will be whatever is cooler":

"It is a new challenge. The thing is we don't really like musicals. Most musicals are really pants. They're really not very cool," said The Edge.

This is, of course, arrant wasp toss, to borrow David Quantick's phrase. Musicals are pants and not really cool? A man who is churning out eye-podge like the Zooropa tour and the current U2 "Oooh, look, we've got a big mechanical crab" effort is suggesting that the work of Oscar Hammerstein is "pants"? Seriously?

"It is much more like opera than a straight musical. We're actually not calling it a musical for that reason because we don't want to put people off."

Oh, yes - protect that all-important audience of Spiderman fans who are more likely to go to an opera than a musical.

"We just thought, 'Well if we're going to do this we should do something that knocks it out of the park and hits on every level with great tunes'."

Ah, yes. That's exactly making it sound like an opera and not a musical.

So, with The Edge tossing wasps left, right and centre, you'd have thought Bono would be able to take the day off. But, oh no - if there's a self-aggrandising bar being raised, Bono is going to be keen to be having a go at that target:

Bono explained the characters won't be the same which appeared in comic or the film adaptations of the original Marvel comic series.

"Our Peter Parker is much more…not Kurt Cobain, but a kind of slacker, a more kind of shy sort of guy," said Bono.

Now, I read The Amazing Spider-Man, in three panel chunks, when he replaced Modesty Blaize in the Evening Argus, and the one thing about Peter Parker in that was that - yes, he was nothing like Kurt Cobain, but he was quite shy and something of an under-achiever. I await Bono reinventing Batman as some sort of millionaire with a fetish for teenage kids, or Superman as - hey, how crazy - a bloke from another planet who's allergic to Gordon Burns' Krypton Factor.

But just when Bono has done one big reveal which turns out to be dud, he turns out to have another sleeve with nothing up it:

Bono said: "We've got a new villain, it's a girl. It's a very extraordinary role. We've taken it to a much more dizzy place than you'd expect."

Oh, you've got a female villain? What an extra-ordinary twist you have come up with, Mr. Bono. A bad female? Whoever else would have had the sheer gall to suggest a lowly female could be the bad guy? You certainly have shaken all my preconceptions, like a man shaking an Etch-A-Sketch so hard it will never show another drawing.

Hands turns EMI round. Sort of.

Lots of back slapping and no champagne corks popping as EMI manages to make a profit in the three months to the end of June.

Guy Hands - one of the men who, in another role, put money into the movie Nine Dead Gay Guys - has been trumpeting his success:

Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation were £59.2m, compared with a loss of £45.1m in the same quarter in 2007.

Mr Hands told staff: "The bulk of the dramatic improvement in our performance was down to the transformation we have been carrying through in the way we work."

Yes. That'll be it, Mr. Hands. And nothing whatsoever to do with the smart timing of the Coldplay release so the massive sales came just before the close-off of this period's sale figures, then.

Meanwhile: Albarn and Hewlett have turned their backs on Damon's long-time EMI home to offer Monkey: Journey To The West to XL recordings instead. Gossips suggest that Albarn is less-than-thrilled with the Hands regime.

Rufus Wainwright makes a grand drama

It was, we guess, only a matter of time: Rufus Wainwright is writing an opera:

"The construct of the diva, from Maria Callas to Norma Desmond, and the movie Diva from the '80s. And God darn it, there's a bit of me in that too."

A bit of you, Rufus? In an opera about Callas, Desmond and divas? Do you think?