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DVD Review: Anna Nicole Smith opera a titillating morality tale of our time

By John Terauds on February 29, 2012

Eva-Maria Westbroeck as Anna Nicole Smith

THE ROYAL OPERA
Anna Nicole (Royal Opera House/OpusArte)

It’s been a year since the Royal Opera House premiere of Anna Nicole, Mark Anthony Turnage and Richard Thomas’ two-act spin on the sordid life and death of Anna Nicole Smith.

Remember her? The mercenary tabloid personality who died at the ripe old age of 39, consumed by an unslakable thirst for — was it fame? Alcohol? Money? Security? Drugs?

The great thing about this opera is that we don’t have to remember her, or have cared about her either in life or death. She is an archetype we know all too well in the age of TMZ. As are her silicone breasts, her white-trash Texas family, her disposable husbands and her Svengali lawyer-confidant, Howard K. Stern.

What this begets, operatically speaking, is a twisted morality tale in the hard-biting tradition of Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht, decorated with the potty-mouthed, tawdrily dressed trimmings of celebrity voyeurism.

Turnage and Thomas’ take on the story is nothing short of masterful, as they tread lightly through a minefield that could easily make a story such as Smith’s too didactic, or too mocking.

Miraculously, we get a big-blued-eyed girl who is at once a symbol of everything that’s wrong about modern American society and a terrifyingly human being we can immediately identify with.

Turnage’s music is a deft blend of through-composed grand opera, intimate dialogue and popular music cues. It is resolutely modern, yet timeless.

Thomas, who wrote the book for Jerry Springer: The Opera, tap dances a fine line between broad satire and honest emotional connection as he connects the dots in a story that can only end badly.

The production, directed by Richard Jones and conducted by Royal Opera House music director Antonio Pappano, also gets everything right.

Fearless Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroeck deserves a lot of credit for bringing Nicole to life, embodying her naively determined leaps from the griddle into the fire.

She gets fine help from a strong cast that includes Canadian baritone Gerald Finley as Stern, who comes to control more and more of Nicole’s life. English mezzo Susan Bickley is fantastic as Nicole’s mother Virgie, the opera’s Cassandra.

No matter what you may or may not think about the cult of celebrity, Anna Nicole is magnificent, timeless theatre.

For more details on the DVD release, click here.

This is the promotional video for the DVD:

John Terauds

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