Roger Waters has been keeping himself busy, subjecting himself to a number of interviews recently. The principal focus of these has been his recently released opera, Ca Ira, the Rome performances a few days ago, and what the future holds (particularly in light of the recent Pink Floyd performance at Live 8). We've got details of a number of these, including downloads of a couple of TV broadcasts...

Roger Waters © ITN

First off, Roger was interviewed on the BBC TV "Breakfast" show this morning. In the interview, which lasted (with video clips) around ten minutes, he covered familiar ground, talking of the Live 8 reunion (with hopes that such an event happens again), but focuses on his opera (including a few barbed remarks about Bush and Blair).

Included was a snippet of the Rome performance, showing the orchestra in action, and John Relyea (who performed in place of Bryn Terfel) in particular.

Roger is asked if he wanted to perform the work in the UK, which he agreed that he would. He said that he'd love for it to be performed at the Royal Opera House in London. He also remarked that there would be performances next summer in Paris, Poland (see below), and at Epidavros in Greece.

You can view the whole interview through this link, although the quality isn't brilliant, the sound is clear and it gives a good impression of what the interview was like. Sadly there are no options for viewing a better quality stream of this footage.

He was also interviewed by the UK's Independent Television News (ITN) which has Roger responding to critics, who have been less than enthusiastic in calling the piece an opera, preferring to refer to it as a musical.

"The responses to it have been mixed. The general consensus that it's a musical is wrong because in musicals people speak to each other as well as singing to each other and they dance around quite a lot as well" he said.

Roger also explained why he writes songs in the style he does: "We don't get to choose what we write. You can't help it. It's inside you and it just comes out. That's what art is."

The interview appeared on TV at 11pm on the ITN News Channel (on digital cable and satellite) and lasted for some seven minutes.

The Dutch "OOR" magazine’s November issue also features an interview with Roger. The recently released Ça Ira and the Live 8 reunion were discussed in the interview. In the final paragraph Roger goes into the matter whether they will play together again in the future.

"For a while I’ve been thinking about having Cirque du Soleil performing The Wall. But after doing Live8, a collaboration to perform Dark Side Of The Moon with [David, Nick and Richard] appeals to me as well. There has to be a special motive though. Recently we have been offered 250 million dollars to do a Pink Floyd world tour. We might be friendly now but we declined this offer."

The article concludes that, whatever the reason might be for a possible continuation, at any rate it won’t be for the money. There are plenty of signs of hope for the Pink Floyd fans, as the Ça Ira album cover appropriately indicates. Waters smiles: "Yes, there is always hope".

As confirmed now by Roger himself, there are plans for Roger to perform Ca Ira in Poland. More than that, the Polish media are suggesting that the plans are for the world premiere of the full stage production to occur there on 7th July 2006 in Poznan, Poland, to commemorate the victims of the Poznan riots of 1956. The director of the event, Janusz Jozefowicz, has apparently agreed the show with Waters and will work out specific details shortly.

A five minute news story on Polish TV channel TVP can be viewed through this link.