A music collector is attempting to sell a CD that includes three songs from John Paul Jones’ unreleased opera for $50,000.
John Paul Jones has spent years working on an opera version of “The Ghost Sonata”, a play by the Swedish playwright August Strindberg. Jones’ opera remains unreleased, despite previous interviews and documents claiming it would be staged as easy as 2016.
A CD containing demonstration recordings of three songs from Jones’ opera was purchased by a collector in a New York record shop. The collector is now seeking to sell the CD for $50,000 through Discogs, claiming in the sales listing that “it might be the ultimate John Paul Jones or Led Zeppelin related collectable disc of rare music.”
A YouTube video containing 49 seconds of audio from two of the three songs on the CDs was posted on YouTube:
The audio heard in the YouTube video matches a since-removed promotional video for the opera that LedZepNews reported on in 2018.
The demonstration recordings heard on the CD were performed by the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera and a group of opera performers. There is no indication that Jones performed on any of the tracks.
Jones has spent years perfecting his opera. He began talking about it publicly in 2013, but evidence online shows Jones has been in talks about the project since at least 2010.
Jones has explained in interviews that his opera is an adaptation of “Spöksonaten” (“The Ghost Sonata,”) a play written by Strindberg in 1907.
The play is about a student and the people who live in a fancy apartment building in Stockholm. A mysterious character in a wheelchair named Jacob Hummel allows the student into the building, but then the student finds that everything inside the apartment is nightmarish.
“The Ghost Sonata” explores themes like the supernatural and the class divide. In an interview with Tight But Loose published in June 2016, Jones described the play as “a psychological drama — it’s very dark there are a few comic moments in it but not too many.”
It’s unclear whether there are any immediate plans to stage Jones’ opera. The project was mentioned in an updated biography of Jones published in 2023 ahead of his performances at the 2024 Big Ears music featival, however.
An archived copy of the now-deleted web page reads: “John has recently been finalising the orchestration of his first opera, entitled ‘The Ghost Sonata’ which is based on the play written by August Strindberg.”
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