Lyric Opera 2025-2026 Issue 7 - A Night of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness

19 | Lyric Opera of Chicago Opposite: The band’s original lineup, in 1995 — D’Arcy Wretzky, Jimmy Chamberlin, Billy Corgan, and James Iha. This page: Wretzky, Corgan, and Iha at the MTV Awards in Europe. The four of us come from nothing. And, y’ know, we hatched this little dream between us, and fought all odds and succeeded. French film A Trip to the Moon and a spacy steampunk aesthetic for a colorful fin de siècle journey into the unknown. The five singles would also be collected as EPs for 1996’s The Aeroplane Flies High box set, which delivered a staggering 28 additional b-sides from the Mellon Collie era. Aeroplane’s offerings ranged from an array of covers to harder and darker material to more introspective and acoustic fare and much more. In the first half of the 2010s, deluxe reissues of Mellon Collie and Aeroplane would deliver even more music from that era, showcasing just how prolific the mid-’90s were for the band. “We finally managed to manifest everything I always thought we could do,” Corgan told Rolling Stone in 1995. “Somehow we managed to get a lot of blood out of the stone.” Photo by Patrick Ford/Redferns A Trip to the Moon and a spacy steampunk aesthetic for a colorful fin de siècle journey into the u known. and Aeroplane would deli r even more music from that era, showcasing just how prolific the mid-’90s were for the band. Photo by Patrick Ford/Redferns