Bohemian Rhapsody

On the evening of May 29, 2026, inside Allendale United Methodist Church in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gay Men's Chorus of Tampa Bay's smaller ensemble, the Rainbros, took on one of pop music's most audacious gambles. As part of the concert “Love in Technicolor,” the group delivered Mark Brymer's arrangement of Queen's “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Freddie Mercury's 1975 mock-opera from A Night at the Opera, with no solo spotlight to lean on, only a handful of voices and a great deal of nerve.

Brymer's setting is shrewd about scale. Rather than chasing Queen's multitracked wall of sound, it threads Mercury's three-songs-in-one structure through a leaner texture, moving from the hushed a cappella opening through the ballad's piano-anchored lyricism, into the operatic patter of Galileos and Scaramouches, and out the far side to the headbanging rock coda. Pitched in Brymer's Bb major and G minor, it asks for agility above all.

The Rainbros met that demand with tight, transparent close harmony. Their small numbers turned out to be an asset: entrances landed cleanly, the mock-operatic call-and-response volleyed back and forth with comic precision, and the dynamic swings, from whispered confession to full-throated defiance, registered without ever turning muddy. Intimacy, not bombast, carried the drama.

Allendale's resonant sanctuary lent the unaccompanied passages a glowing bloom, letting the opening chords hang in the air, while its clarity kept the rapid operatic syllables crisp. The audience, primed by the very first “Is this the real life?,” answered the final cymbal-crash gesture with a roar of recognition and delight.

Within the “Let's Go to the Movies!” act, the choice lands perfectly, evoking the song's cinematic second life on screen. For an ensemble built on chosen family, visibility, and joy, watching a small band of voices conquer this beloved, theatrical epic together felt like the whole mission distilled into six glorious minutes.