It's hard explain the difference...but it's not the same ...maybe the best way to explain it would be to say, when your watching the typical musical, you know that overwhelming sense of camp is part and parcel to the whole production. It's camp for camps sake, at least to me....Mercury doing camp on record and in concert is a fleeting thing at best, he always comes back to GENUINE rock intensity at some point on a record or in a show, whereas a musical only has genuine camp thru and thru...
make sense?
mmmm I see your point but I always saw Freddie as permanently and deliberately camp. It was the appeal of the band and the name, of course. Compare his stage strut with, say, Jagger.....oh, not a good comparison.....Bono.....oooops............Plant........possibly...... there must be a real rocker front man somewhere......apart from Meatloaf who was stage theatrical rock to the core without a hint of camp..