JPJ Performing in Upcoming Anna Nicole Smith Opera

[SteveAJones]

John Paul Jones is involved in an upcoming opera about the life and death of Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith.

"I'll be playing in the pit for some of the time, with the basses," Jones told Classic Rock Magazine, "and I'm also on stage playing with a jazz trio with Peter Erskine."

Erskine is a drummer, composer and professor (see his official biography).

"Anna Nicole," an English-language opera, debuts at London's Royal Opera House on Feb. 17 and runs for six performances through March.

[SteveAJones]

Anna Nicole: the opera

Anna Nicole Smith was the waitress who became a Playboy pin-up and billionaire's wife, before dying penniless at 39, the bloated laughing stock of reality TV. Her life was a soap opera. And now composer Mark-Anthony Turnage has turned it into a real one

Peter Conrad

The Observer, Sunday 2 January 2011

Anna Nicole Smith celebrating Christmas with her billionaire husband J Howard Marshall in 1994.

Photograph: Sipa Press/SIPA

Imagine the love-goddess Aphrodite fitted with silicone-swollen boobs, bloated by junk food, slowed down by pills and befogged by booze: that was Anna Nicole Smith, who is soon to wiggle, waddle and stagger across the stage of the Royal Opera House. Commissioning a new opera, Tony Hall, chief executive of the ROH, asked the composer Mark-Anthony Turnage to choose a contemporary subject, not some remote, ancestral myth. In the event, Turnage's Anna Nicole supplies both at once. The heroine is our contemporary, or would be if she were still alive; but she was also a mythical being – an artificial deity, the superhuman embodiment of our faults and follies, invented and marketed as an object of desire.

Anna Nicole's life beggared the most lurid fiction. She began as Vickie Lynn Hogan, a peroxide-blond waitress from the dusty Texas backblocks. Having changed her name to something classier, she was chosen in 1992 as one of Hugh Hefner's pin-ups and draped across a Playboy centrefold. In 1994 she married the oil billionaire J Howard Marshall II, who had tottered into the so-called "titty bar" where she worked as a lap dancer. She was 26, he was 89, incontinent and mentally incompetent. They never lived together, but they did go shopping a lot: she plied him with Valium as she wheeled him round jewellery stores and scooped up booty. Fed on scraps of raw bacon and sometimes left out in the rain, in 1995 the old man obligingly made her a widow. She signalled her availability by attending his funeral in a backless white wedding dress, with a yapping lapdog tucked under her arm. When Marshall's family disputed her right to inherit his estate, Anna Nicole took her claim to the US supreme court, which is still considering the case.

She was the perfect celebrity, sustained by effrontery and unblessed by talent. Her appearance in one of the Naked Gun sequels earned her an award as worst new star (with OJ Simpson taking an equivalent honour as worst supporting actor). She can be glimpsed for a few seconds in the Coen brothers' Hudsucker Proxy, playing one of Tim Robbins's tarty trophies. She preens in a leopard-skin outfit, and when asked a question emits not a word but a noise: "Miaow!" Weight gain and botched plastic surgery put a stop to her modelling contracts; in 2002 a reality TV show chronicling her antics gave her a new career as a raucous self-publicist and made her a national laughing stock.

In 2006 her daughter Dannielynn was born on television by caesarean section. A tag team of occasional lovers – including Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt, a retired masseur currently married to Zsa Zsa Gabor – all claimed to be the baby's father, and eagerly volunteered to look after the Marshall inheritance. Paternity was eventually assigned by the courts to a paparazzi photographer called Larry Birkhead, who now has custody of the child.

Days after Dannielynn's birth, Anna Nicole's 20-year-old son Daniel, the product of a teenage marriage, died from an overdose while visiting his mother and half-sister in the maternity ward. Howard K Stern, Anna Nicole's lawyer, agent and purported lover, denied feeding Daniel drugs and flushing the leftovers down the lavatory. Stern then exchanged vows with Anna Nicole on a yacht in the Bahamas, after which they ate a wedding breakfast shipped in from the American mainland by Kentucky Fried Chicken.

In 2007 Anna Nicole herself, aged only 39, died in a garishly opulent suite at the Hard Rock hotel and casino in Florida, brimming with methadone and prescription medicines supplied by compliant doctors. Last summer Stern was found guilty of contributing to her death by acting as an unofficial pharmacist, and is due to be sentenced on Thursday in California.

Anna Nicole was a woman of primal hungers. "Hurry up, I'm starving!" she orders the obsequious Stern in her reality show. At a casino buffet in Las Vegas, he heaps a plate for her as she yells across the room; under his breath he mutters: "She's not gonna want salad." Burgers, sausages, waffles, barbecued ribs, processed cheese and whipped cream chugged into Anna Nicole, to be later expelled by laxatives or extracted by liposuction. Between blow-outs she snacked on gherkins that looked like warty green penises. "I'm proud to swallow," she liked to brag (though she was not referring to food). Even her poodle Sugar Pie was named after a sweet treat, as if in an emergency the dog might be edible. She also had an appetite for dollars, which was facilitated by her puzzlement about the decimal point: she once told a court she had "trouble with zeroes", and thought that $2,500 was only $25.00.

Above all she craved fame, which she attained by undressing. Eating and spending were her occupations, but exposure was her business. Long before Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction, Anna Nicole's amplified boobs regularly popped out from under cover for the cameras. Whenever that happened she would shimmy, squeal and ask the ogling crowd: "Do you like my body?" The response was always a feral roar of lust. Like one of the sacred prostitutes who pleasured worshippers in the temples of Babylon, she belonged to whoever fantasised about her.

Although Elaine Padmore, director of opera at the ROH, promises that Turnage's Anna Nicole will not be "tawdry", a brochure uses inflammatory red letters to warn of "extreme language, drug abuse and sexual content"; the libretto, after all, is by Richard Thomas, co-author of Jerry Springer: The Opera, which in its subtitle equates opera with exhibitionism. Thomas's expletives may be new, but nothing else should startle genteel music-lovers. Opera already has plenty of hoydens and harlots like Anna Nicole Smith. The heroines of Verdi's La traviata, Puccini's Manon Lescaut and Massenet's Thaïs are courtesans, and Strauss's Salome performs a striptease without needing the pole around which Anna Nicole's legs twined themselves when she cavorted at the club in Houston.

In opera, however, these wantons all finish redeemed. Violetta the fallen woman is raised up by the sacrifice she makes, and the reformed Thaïs slumps at the foot of the cross. Anna Nicole did not end in a state of grace. When her son died, she hysterically entreated Jesus to take her instead, then recovered in time to sell the last photographs of him alive; at his funeral, she climbed into his open coffin. A few months later, she died in a puddle of vomit, and millions peeked at snapshots of her messy exit on the internet.

Nowadays any celebrity who misbehaves is likely to be called a diva, but Anna Nicole will soon have a legitimate right to the name: she is to be played at Covent Garden by the Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek, acclaimed everywhere for her impassioned performances in Wagner and Strauss, Verdi and Puccini. Ever since receiving Turnage's score, Westbroek has been puzzling over the motives of the woman whose skin she will have to inhabit. "Why would you do that to yourself? Where does that come from?" she wondered in a recent interview. She has decided that Anna Nicole was driven, like Salome, by an erotic compulsion that compelled her to destroy herself: "I find her fascinating and tragic because she really went for death."

In opera, music harmonises discords and helps to pardon moral faults, but the real Anna Nicole was loud, unlyrical and intermittently obscene. In one of her films, Skyscraper, a terrorist in black leather pants bends her over to be sodomised. She pulls a knife, stabs him in the groin, then aims a gun at him. "You wanna fuck me? Then fuck this!" she snarls, blowing his head off. In her last film, a sci-fi farrago called Illegal Aliens, her medicated stupor made it impossible for her to memorise dialogue, so instead she burps, hiccups and noisily farts. If she speaks, it is to give bulletins about her bodily needs. "My stomach hurts," she whines. "Why's my poopyslot sore?" she asks after a mind-controlling suppository is inserted. Later she urgently announces "I gotta pee!"

In her reality show she cheats in an eating contest, and is overheard in the lavatory spewing up bucketloads of pizza and ravioli. Caught out by Stern, she bawls at him in the street: "I just went in there and took a shit, OK?" Elsewhere she suddenly remembers that she didn't masturbate that morning, and wanders off to find her vibrator; the cameras that follow her everywhere retire as the knobbly length of latex powers up. By contrast with Anna Nicole, Katie Price and Kerry Katona look and sound like nuns in a closed order.

Anna Nicole was woozily ignorant about the world she lived in, and when first flown from Texas to Los Angeles by Playboy was astonished to find that California was not, as she believed, on the east coast. Geopolitical crises passed her by. Stern once tried to persuade her to take up the Israeli cause, and told her about the activities of Arab suicide bombers. "Wow," she marvelled, "why would they do that? Ain't it kinda painful?" She then chirpily added: "I don't know nothin' 'bout nothin."

She may not have understood her times, but she typified them all the same. The Reagan era legitimised greed; Anna Nicole's grossness was a logical consequence of this shift in public morality. Bill Clinton found greasy food and easy women irresistible, and right-wingers argued that he and Anna Nicole – both spawned by dysfunctional families from the southern underclass – were interchangeable. In 2006 the administration of George W Bush accepted responsibility for Anna Nicole by sending its solicitor general to file a brief for her during her dispute with the Texas probate courts over the Marshall millions. She instinctively knew how the system worked: the law, back in those heady days, was a means of enrichment and an extension of showbiz.

She became the symbol of a binge that ended soon after she died, when the American economy imploded. She appeared to be rich, though she lived off hand-outs and never paid bills. She was overbearing and uproarious, but her energy had toxic sources. She began the day with an injection of vitamin B12, immunoglobins and human growth hormone. These were her "longevity drugs", though they were part of what shortened her life rather than prolonging it.

Along with the usual female accoutrements, her handbag contained enough uppers and downers to concuss and then resuscitate an elephant. A tabloid took an inventory of the drugs she carried round with her, listing Aldactazide, Decadron, Demerol, Imipramine, methocarbamol, Prilosec, Propulsid, Seldane, Synthroid, temazepam, Vicodin and Xanax. She washed these down with tequila, and kept her engine revved with snorts of cocaine. Her dog was on Prozac, with a psychotherapist on standby to deal with its whimpering anxiety.

Anna Nicole's narcissism matched the glutted, self-satisfied mood of America in the 1990s. Skyscraper contains a sex scene in which her lover, conscientiously doing his duty behind her as she bestraddles the bed, seems irrelevant to the proceedings. The camera concentrates on her famous breasts, which look like a pair of tanned twin Zeppelins. Anna Nicole herself seems to be in awe of them as she fingers a nipple and palpates the squashy mounds; the man is at best a substitute for her vibrator.

Like America with its trickle-down theory of affluence, she allowed the rest of the world to partake of her bounty, so long as it remained appropriately grateful for the favour. Throwing a Christmas party in the reality show, she has an ice sculpture moulded from her torso and sets it up as a punchbowl; arriving guests are required to kneel before her hollowed-out bosom and slurp up the contents. But those boobs were as much a burden as America's imperial role. Anna Nicole referred to them as transplants not implants, as if they had been grafted on; they caused her crippling back problems, and in 1994 a saline sac ruptured, leaked and shrivelled, leaving her with an asymmetrical chest. "This is my life, my whole world!" she screamed as she summoned the surgeon. "Everything I have is because of my breasts!" No wonder she deflated.

Like all wannabes, she suffered from mythomania, and fancied she had relatives in heaven. Hence her insistence that she was the farmed-out child of Marilyn Monroe (who inconveniently died five years before Anna Nicole was born). Her chosen consort also belonged in the upper air. In one episode of her reality show, she slavers over Superman, whom she finds on a mural at a theme park. Coaxed by Stern, she gobbles the cartoon figure's crotch and licks his aerodynamic anus. Mortal men could not measure up. Stern is relentlessly mocked, called a "pussy boy" when he won't go swimming, and asked "Is your dick hard yet?" as some Las Vegas chorines grind in his face. In another episode, Anna Nicole dismisses a nerdy millionaire who arrives to take her out for dinner. "How's his butt?" she asks one of the camera crew that trails her. "Oh yuk, it's flat!" At moments like this she resembles a gay man in a female fat suit.

Skyscraper, in which she plays a helicopter pilot who clutches her chopper's joystick with scarlet talons as she ferries passengers between high-rise landing pads in Los Angeles, gives her a properly divine job of salvation to do. Like Schwarzenegger or Stallone with mammaries not muscles, she thwarts a gang of terrorists in black leather pants who have captured one of the city's office towers. In Illegal Aliens she belongs to a trio of extraterrestrial kickboxers who descend to Earth, wriggle into skimpy shorts and strained bras, then set about recapturing a gizmo called a mega-gravitron, that has tugged the moon out of the sky and put it on a collision course with Earth. Someone asks one of Anna Nicole's nubile colleagues what the nonsensical plot is all about. "We're trying to save the world, dickhead!" snaps the babe from outer space. Anna Nicole, walking unsteadily and slurring her speech, is excused on medical grounds from taking part in the action. Her contribution is to disappear: this time she magically morphs into a helicopter, and the other women ride in her as they go about the work of restoring cosmic order.

Her craziest act of self-consecration occurred after the death of her son, when she arranged herself into a tableau of divine anguish. Daniel Smith died while she and Stern were asleep in the same hospital room; the bereaved mother had Stern photograph her clasping Daniel's stiff body. It was a pietà styled for the tabloids, with a blearily voluptuous and unvirginal Mary cradling a Christ who was killed, according to the autopsy, by a mixture of methadone and antidepressants.

Did disasters like this make Anna Nicole tragic, as Eva-Maria Westbroek believes? Probably not, since she was so quick to capitalise on her misfortunes, and so unwilling to accept responsibility for them. Her mode was melodrama, and she had an operatic tendency to exaggerate. "Kill me, kill me please, get me out of my misery!" she begs in the reality show, before banging her head against the wall and collapsing. What provoked this aria was not remorse or a tormented conscience; a mirror had given her a confidential glimpse of her oversized bum in a mirror and, like every other self-advertising neurotic on reality TV, she was acting up for the cameras.

Her agony may have been mere histrionics, but she was certainly a victim – of her own false values, and also of a society whose ethics she challenged and whose hypocrisy she exposed. In 1994 she appeared on the cover of New York magazine wearing cowboy boots and stuffing herself with cheesy crisps from a bag held open between her spread legs; the image illustrated a scornful analysis of America by the writer Tad Friend as a "White Trash Nation", overrun by rednecks like Beavis and Butt-Head and Lorena Bobbitt (the harridan who chopped off her cheating husband's penis) and of course Clinton and his bimbos. Friend's article warned against the "guilt-free freedom" of these monsters, who threatened a culture that traditionally valued self-denial and regarded fame as a reward for achievement, not a by-product of vacuous notoriety.

Sexually, Anna Nicole was equally alarming, less a wet dream than a castrating nightmare. Her pin-up pictures catered to a voyeurism that was edged with fear and envenomed by contempt. Hence the barrage of misogynistic abuse, as lethal as gunfire, against which she battles in Skyscraper. "Let's off this bitch!" growls one of the terrorists. "Time to die, you blond bitch!" screeches another. A third coldly sneers: "You fuckin' whore!"

One way of neutralising her was to treat her as a mother not a mistress, and hangers-on habitually called her "Momma". She allayed male terrors by pretending to be infantile: she conversed in baby talk, and addressed the doddering, dribbling J Howard Marshall as "Paw-paw". Despairing of men or despising them, Anna Nicole turned to other women for sexual comfort. Gossips reported on romps with girlfriends in a seething jacuzzi, and in the reality show she seems happiest when comparing implants with some Las Vegas dancers who are naked except for their sequins.

The Royal Opera is expecting and probably counting on a fuss, but no one should dispute Turnage's choice of subject. The gaudily uninhibited Anna Nicole belongs in opera, where her many predecessors include the man-killing heroine of Alban Berg's Lulu. At one point in Lulu's career, the composer who is her latest conquest fondles her body and applies musical markings to its various sectors: her ankles, he says, should be played grazioso, her knees misterioso, her breasts cantabile, while a steady rhythmical andante conducts love towards its targeted climax. I can't wait to hear how Turnage has composed the symphonic physique of Anna Nicole Smith.

Anna Nicole premieres at the Royal Opera House, London WC2 on 17 Feb and runs until 4 March

[SteveAJones]

BBC To Air Anna Nicole Smith The Opera

By Tim Adler in London | Wednesday, 25 August 2010

Auntie will broadcast the latest Royal Opera House production by the co-creator of Jerry Springer: the Opera on BBC4 early 2011. Anna Nicole will have its world premiere at Covent Garden on February 11. The ex-stripper and Playboy model married 89-year-old oil tycoon J Howard Marshall, more than 60 years her senior, in 1994. She was then embroiled into a long-running legal battle to claim a share of his estate. Smith died of a prescription drugs overdose in 2007, aged 39. Christians protested outside BBC offices when it aired Jerry Springer: the Opera on TV in 2005. One Christian group attempted to sue BBC boss Mark Thompson for blasphemy. The Royal Opera House is billing Anna Nicole as "a celebratory story of our times that includes extreme language, drug abuse and sexual content". Expect the viewer complaint hotline to be ringing off the hook.

http://www.deadline.com/2010/08/bbc-to-air-anna-nicole-smith-%e2%80%93-the-opera/

[SteveAJones]

Coming soon to Britain's citadel of high culture: Anna Nicole Smith, the opera

Libretto by Jerry Springer co-creator will be 'witty, clever, thoughtful and sad'

By Charlotte Higgins, Chief Arts Writer

The Guardian, Thursday 12 February 2009

The tragicomic life of Anna Nicole Smith, the glamour model who famously married a stupendously wealthy tycoon 63 years her senior, may seem a more likely subject for prurient farce than grand opera.

But, according to the Royal Opera House, it is perfect fare for transformation into a piece of lyric theatre, a grand musical and dramatic parable for our times.

So it is that one of the most celebrated names of British contemporary music, Mark-Anthony Turnage, is writing the story of Anna Nicole Smith as an opera, to be staged at Covent Garden in 2011. The libretto will be provided by Richard Thomas who, as the co-creator of Jerry Springer the Opera, is no stranger to controversy.

"It is not going to be a horrible, sleazy evening," Elaine Padmore, Covent Garden's director of opera told the Guardian. "It is not going to be tawdry; it is going to be witty, clever, thoughtful and sad.

"In broad outline, it will tell the story of her life, the people who influenced her, her progress ... Clearly the story is about a woman who met an ancient gentleman in a wheelchair, but it's not going to be a straight narrative; choices have been made about significant moments, selecting which incidents in her life are to be built up."

There will be no shortage of dramatic material. Smith, born Vickie Lynn Hogan in 1967, dropped out of her Texan high school, married a fellow worker at Jim's Krispy Fried Chicken - and then transformed herself, via a breast enhancement, into a glamour model and pole dancer.

She married J Howard Marshall when he was 89, and she 26. After his death she pursued what she argued was her share of her inheritance through the courts, fought by her late husband's son. She briefly became the (anti)heroine of her own reality TV show; her weight ballooned and she received liposuction. Three days after the birth of her daughter, of no certain father, her 20-year-old son by her first marriage died; five months later, in 2007, she was dead herself.

"It is not just a documentary about her, but a parable about celebrity and what it does to people," said Padmore. "It can be moving, it can be funny and it tells universal truths about human frailty.

"It is a very sad story - a larger-than-life American story, as was Puccini's Girl of the Golden West. It will be a slice of our times - of America in the pre-Obama days."

Padmore likened the work to Zeit-oper, the German subgenre of opera popular in the 1920s and 30s, in which socio-political issues of the times were tackled. Such works include Ernst Krenek's Jonny Spielt Auf (Jonny Plays On), a jazz-inflected tale of Alpine infidelity culminating in a fatal train crash.

Padmore also compared the story to the plot of Donizetti's classic, Lucia di Lammermoor, a tale loosely based on the life of a real 17th century Scot, Janet Dalrymple. In the opera, Lucia is forced to abandon her lover and enter into a politically expedient marriage - but she murders her husband and her lover takes his life. "We have Lucia di Lammermoor," said Padmore, "so why not Anna Nicole Smith? She also led a diva-like life."

Padmore added: "Just because a life has been in the tabloids does not mean it must be treated in a tawdry way on stage. The other way of looking at this is to point out that opera suffers from an image of being old, European, archaic. New works on popular topics are good: only look at the way composers like Philip Glass and John Adams have taken subjects and personalities from the news."

The project fits, said Padmore, into the Royal Opera House's policy of staging a new opera on the main stage roughly every other year. Its most recent premieres have been Harrison Birtwistle's Minotaur, and Thomas Adès' The Tempest.

Turnage, 48, is the composer of two previous operas, Greek (1988) and The Silver Tassie (2000), for which he won an Olivier award. His music, much of which shows a jazz influence, has been performed by British orchestras and has been championed by Sir Simon Rattle.

Musician and writer Thomas is best known for his music-theatre work Tourette's Diva and for writing Jerry Springer: the Opera, with Stewart Lee, which prompted fury from some Christian groups.

The work will be directed by Richard Jones, known for his visually spectacular and intellectually searching productions. "It will be a fantastic event for the Royal Opera and should appeal to a wide range of audiences," said Padmore.

Opera takes on its times

Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro (1786) Figaro, a servant, outwits his master. Napoleon called the original Beaumarchais play "the revolution in action".

Mascagni, Cavalleria rusticana (1890) Illicit love, pregnancy and murder among the Sicilian peasantry.

Janácek, Jenufa (1904) Illicit love, pregnancy and murder among the Moravian peasantry.

Puccini, Madama Butterfly (1904) Pinkerton, an American officer, marries and then abandons Butterfly, a 15-year-old Japanese girl.

Adams, Nixon in China (1987) Nixon and Kissinger confront Mao and Zhou Enlai.

Adès, Powder Her Face (1995) The downfall of the Duchess of Argyll, set in 1990. Perhaps the only opera to contain an extended fellatio scene.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/feb/12/anna-nicole-smith-the-opera

[leddy]

JPJ a multi talented man who can play any musical style, thats a true musician,will watch it when its on, well see what it is like, some Opera is hard work, although the subject matter makes me think it will not be Wagners Triston and Isolde, now that is hard work believe me.

[beetleron]

too bad he's involved in something so tasteless

[leddy]

too bad he's involved in something so tasteless

Its an opera about a n ex model...not a kiddy fiddler mate.

Do you like The Who ?? Tommy maybe ??

[the chase]

John Paul Jones is involved in an upcoming opera about the life and death of Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith.

"I'll be playing in the pit for some of the time, with the basses," Jones told Classic Rock Magazine, "and I'm also on stage playing with a jazz trio with Peter Erskine."

Erskine is a drummer, composer and professor (see his official biography).

"Anna Nicole," an English-language opera, debuts at London's Royal Opera House on Feb. 17 and runs for six performances through March.

John Paul Jones and Peter Erskine together is going to sound absolutely incredible.

Erskine is one of the most talented and tasteful drummers in the world.

[ledzepfvr]

I'm sure those involved will do a good job on this project and wish them luck. But I would not go to this if I were offered an opportunity as I did not care for her when she was alive.

[SteveAJones]

Leanne's stage bow at Covent Garden

Thursday 30th December 2010

By Sam McGregor

A DANCER from Bicester is set to take to the stage at Covent Garden after securing a role in opera Anna Nicole.

Leanne Blossom, 20, is already in rehearsals for the London show, which opens in February at the Royal Opera House.

The opera is about the life of Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith, her marriage to octogenarian billionaire oil tycoon J Howard Marshall and tragic death in 2007 aged 39.

Former Cooper School pupil Miss Blossom, whose family lives in Fair Close, Bicester, will be one of just six dancers in the show.

She said: "It's my first professional job. My agent sent three of us for an audition. I was the only one to get a part.

"I'm really pleased as I didn't get many parts while I was at college, so it was quite nice to get this."

Miss Blossom said she had also taken up singing since she started studying at Urdang Academy, in London, in 2008, and it had become a passion.

She has got her sights on a part in a musical such as Hairspray.

Asked what advice she would give to any to any budding performers, she said: "You have to work really hard if you really want to do it. There are so many talented people out there, to be good isn't enough you have to really want it and put in the extra work.

"Remember, don't be defeated because someone sitting next to you is better, as the person watching you might like you better."

Miss Blossom's grandmother, Jeannette Upton, of Longfields, Bicester, plans to book tickets for the show.

She said: "We are thrilled to bits for her and just so proud of her.

"It's something she has always wanted and she worked so hard to get there.

"From the time she started dancing, all she wanted to do was go on stage.

"Since she's been at college, she's never missed a day, she's just so dedicated."

Miss Blossom studied performing arts at Abingdon and Witney College, and in 2008 was student of the year in the department. From a young age she learned gymnastics in a group at Bicester leisure centre run by her grandmother. She took up dance when 12 and had lessons with Jam, at Southwold School, and later sessions at the Courtyard, in Launton Road, and Dance Connexions in Wallingford.

http://www.thisisoxfordshire.co.uk/news/8760081.Leanne___s_stage_bow_at_Covent_Garden/?ref=rss

[sam_webmaster]

Anna Nicole Smith: big in life, now big in opera

By Michael Roddy

LONDON (Reuters) - The tabloid life of Playboy centerfold Anna Nicole Smith, who bought big breasts, married an oil billionaire and gave birth on TV, has made it to the opera stage in London in a production true to operatic tradition.

Like her sexy operatic sisters Salome, Lulu and Manon, the Texan babe with the silicone monsters who becomes addicted to pain killers for consequent back troubles, dies of a drug overdose at age 39, just before the final curtain.

Get the monthly that has L.A. talking. Subscribe to Los Angeles Times Magazine at a special introductory rate.

That's when the cheering of the sold-out opening night audience erupted for the Royal Opera House production of a two-hour opera by librettist Richard Thomas, of "Jerry Springer: The Opera" fame, and British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage.

The staging included a tour-de-force performance by Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek as Anna, wearing prosthetic breasts most of the time, and who is zipped up in a body bag as the lights go out.

"The way we look at it, is Anna in this opera is a fabulous eccentric who fell on bad times," Thomas told Reuters Television before the Thursday night premiere of the first of six performances.

The run has been sold out for weeks and, given the risque material, has been the talk of the London music scene and even Britain's tabloids, which normally eschew opera.

The papers were particularly exercised about the prospect of fellatio being performed onstage as Anna attempts to wheedle a ranch from her octogenarian billionaire "paw paw," J. Howard Marshall, who died a little more than a year after they married.

A crowd that gathers blocks out all view while the act supposedly is performed, leaving everything to the imagination.

QUITE AN EYEFUL

The audience, however, got quite an eye and earful for its money. The tone was set with a special cerise-colored curtain topped with a gaudy cameo of Anna Nicole above the proscenium.

The production included an utterly believable re-creation of a lap-dancing club set in Smith's native Texas and a riotous, cocaine-fueled onstage party that featured a guest appearance by Led Zeppelin bass guitarist John Paul Jones, a long-time friend of the composer.

Jones turning up as part of a jazz trio gives only a small clue to the depth and breadth of Turnage's score for the 80-piece ROH orchestra, under the baton of conductor Antonio Pappano.

Turnage, 50 and writing his third opera, pulled from a huge range of styles, including a banjo-tinged tune reminiscent of Smith's native American south.

There also was a witty ensemble for the furious billionaire Marshall's offspring from previous marriages who inform Anna in no uncertain terms she's not getting a dime of his money to a reworking of Sly and the Family Stone's "We Are Family."

"Some people say, 'Why an opera?' and actually she's very much an opera figure," Turnage said.

"It needs that big treatment...as soon as I started working on this I felt this, I could see her singing, Anna Nicole singing. That was very important to me, that I could musicalise her."

The Royal Opera has been at pains to underscore that despite strong parallels to Smith's life, the production is not, as the company's press spokeswoman Ann Richards put it, a "bio-op."

This stance may in part be designed to ward off spillover from the endless legal battle that arose from Smith's efforts to claim part of Marshall's estate, and litigation initiated by the attorney Howard Stern, who was her partner at the end.

Larry Birkhead, the father of Smith's surviving child Dannielynn, told Reuters on Thursday her estate was considering legal options against the makers of the opera.

Thomas said there was "no intention to write a sort of defamatory-prone script," while Turnage said he'd gone out of his way to give Stern, sung with immense finesse by Canadian baritone Gerald Finley, "beautiful music."

The opera's ultimate message, though, is delivered by the woman who wanted to be Marilyn Monroe and instead wound up an overweight addict and laughing-stock of reality television.

"I want to blow you all, blow you all, a kiss," Anna sings near the opera's opening, and again at its tragic conclusion.

[sam_webmaster]

Rocker Jones stars in Anna Nicole

(UKPA) John Paul Jones is appearing on stage at the Royal Opera House performing in a tale of sex, drugs and Playboy bunnies.

The former Led Zeppelin bass guitarist is part of a jazz trio which will play alongside the orchestra during performances of Anna Nicole at the venue in Covent Garden, central London.

The opera, which opens tonight, is based on the life and death of Playboy centrefold Anna Nicole Smith.

The model, who hit the headlines when she married an 89-year-old Texan oil billionaire while working as a lap dancer, died aged 39 from a drugs overdose in 2007.

Director of opera Elaine Padmore said the story was "like a modern day parable about the culture of celebrity".

She added: "So many of the great classic operas take a real story and turn it into something with a universal application and what happened to Anna Nicole echoes the virulent nature of the culture of celebrity today. She was the ultimate overnight starlet who crashed and burned.

"She pursued fame and everything it promised, but it shows that you must be careful what you wish for. Anna Nicole may have enjoyed fame, but in the end it ran her and then it destroyed her. Her story is an opera for our times."

One of the show's writers, Richard Thomas, who also co-wrote Jerry Springer: The Opera, said he thought some critics might "be a bit sniffy".

He added: "She was certainly no angel - she was the patron saint of parties. But deep down, she was also just a single mum trying to do the best for her family in the only way she knew - by earning money, in whatever way she could. But, as she discovered, there is no such thing as an easy fast buck."

The part of Anna Nicole is played by Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek.

[SteveAJones]

Anna Nicole, the opera: She aims to sleaze

By MIKE SILVERMAN

Associated Press

3:52 a.m., Friday, February 18, 2011

Undated photo released by The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London Friday Feb. 18, 2011 shows Dutch Soprano Eva Maria Westbroek as Anna Nicole in the title role of the Royal Opera House's production of "Anna Nicole." It's a rags-to-riches story with sex, drugs, vast wealth and family tragedy. Perfect material for an opera. Still, Britain's venerable Royal Opera raised some eyebrows when it announced that its next production would be based on the short, sensational life of Playboy Playmate-turned-tabloid-superstar Anna Nicole Smith. (AP Photo/Bill Cooper-HO Royal Opera House)

LONDON (AP) - Why write an opera about the sordid life and death of Anna Nicole Smith? That question doubtless leaped to the minds of many when they heard the Royal Opera had commissioned such a work.And sad to say, despite the expenditure of considerable talent and money - and a splendid performance by Eva-Maria Westbroek in the title role - the question remains unanswered following the world premiere of "Anna Nicole" at Covent Garden on Thursday night.

For anyone who may have forgotten, Smith was a single mother from small-town Texas who, thanks to breast enhancement surgery, became a Playboy celebrity and married an oil tycoon 63 years her senior. Her claim on his fortune was disputed by his heirs, and in 2007 - after giving birth (on pay-per-view TV) and seeing her 20-year-old son die of an overdose in her hospital room - she herself, grossly overweight, died of a drug overdose at age 39.

To be sure, Smith's willingness to go to any lengths to lift herself out of poverty and her lifelong obsession with publicity have a lurid quality that seems almost mythic. That's apparently what attracted librettist Richard Thomas and composer Mark-Anthony Turnage when they were looking for a subject for an opera.

But it's not enough to put the spectacle of her life on stage in a chronological narrative, dressed up with satiric jabs at obvious targets and occasional attempts to indict society at large for enabling Anna's career. We may feel pity for her, along with disgust, but those are not responses that redeem the tawdry spectacle of her life. In this retelling of her story, it's hard to empathize with her, much less imagine her as a figure of tragedy.

Thomas has written a sometimes-clever, sometimes-sophomoric libretto very much in the vein of his popular hit, "Jerry Springer: The Opera."

A typical sample is Anna's introductory line: "I want to blow you all - a kiss." (These are also her final words before being zipped into a body bag at the end.)

In a more serious, but not necessarily more persuasive vein, Thomas has Anna exclaim near the end: "Oh, America, you dirty whore. I gave you everything but you wanted more.

Turnage, a respected composer of two previous operas, has set Thomas's words to a tuneful, percussive score that is highly accessible on first hearing. His orchestration includes a role for jazz trio _ a bass guitar, guitar and drums _ that helps blur the lines between "serious" music and a more popular sound. Antonio Pappano, the Royal Opera's music director, conducts with seeming mastery.

There are some striking lyrical moments, as when Anna sings an aria of delight after receiving her new breasts (before the resulting back pain has led to her painkiller addiction.) And there's a lovely ensemble to conclude Act 1 as Anna and her billionaire husband, J. Howard Marshall II, stand atop a wedding cake while distorted strains of Mendelssohn play and various characters express their thoughts.

There's also a gorgeous, melancholy interlude midway through Act 2, marking the passage of 10 years as a curtain covered with double cheeseburgers shows Anna's figure giving way to the obesity of later years.

Westbroek, a Dutch soprano much admired in the standard repertory of Wagner, Verdi and Puccini, throws herself into the title role with all of her considerable assets. On stage for virtually the entire two-hour length of the opera, Westbroek sings with luminous tone and creates a plausible sex symbol with her blond hair and glamorous figure (before she has to put on a fat suit for the later scenes). There's also a disarming sincerity and eagerness to please about her that make the character more appealing than she might otherwise be.

Among the supporting cast, mezzo-soprano Susan Bickley makes a sympathetic figure as Anna's loyal but critical mother, Virgie ("My flesh, my blood, my embarrassment," she sings at one point). Tenor Alan Oke as Marshall makes a splendid entrance flying in from the wings in an over-sized armchair and revels with unabashed glee at buying Anna's sexual favors.

As Anna's surgeon, Doctor Yes, tenor Andrew Rees has fun with his aria describing the differences in cup sizes ("A is small, no use at all." Dominic Rowntree, as Anna's grown-up son, Daniel, doesn't get to sing until after he's dead. Then he has a brief aria, the words of which consist of a list of all the drugs found in his system - Valium, Prozac and about 20 others.

The opera's most problematic character is Anna's lawyer-turned-boyfriend, Howard K. Stern. Portrayed by baritone Gerald Finley, he makes brief appearances in Act 1 but without much purpose.

Even in Act 2, the part seems underwritten - as if the creators couldn't quite decide whether to make him more villain or sorrowful witness to Anna's demise.

Director Richard Jones has given the work a lively, fast-moving production, especially in the first and vastly more entertaining half, which traces Anna's rise in jaunty, energetic fashion.

Though the Royal Opera warned of "extreme language, drug abuse and sexual content," there's little on stage to shock, some rough language aside. Even the sex act to which Anna's opening lines teasingly refer takes place with the chorus tactfully concealing her and Marshall from view.

There are five more performances through March 4, all of them sold out.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/feb/18/anna-nicole-the-opera-she-aims-to-sleaze/?page=2&utm_medium=RSS&utm_source=RSS_Feed

[SteveAJones]

18 February 2011 Last updated at 09:24 GMT

Nicole Smith opera opens for business

By Vincent Dowd Arts reporter, BBC News

Anna Nicole Smith is played by Dutch Soprano Eva Maria WestbroekAnna Nicole Smith found fame and infamy in equal measure, as a 25-year-old Playboy model and the bride of an octogenarian multi-millionaire more than 60 years her senior.

Some said she was the ultimate gold-digger and for many she became a figure of fun.

When she died of an overdose in 2007 it made news around the world.

Now, her life is the basis of a new opera in London.

Three years ago, the Royal Opera House approached composer Mark-Anthony Turnage to write a new work.

Few composers would turn down the chance to play with Covent Garden's huge resources, but the small matter remained of finding a subject.

Alan Oke (centre) is the aged multi-millionaire oil tycoon J Howard Marshall

The Opera House had already said it favoured a contemporary story with a touch of humour but nothing really coalesced until Turnage met Richard Thomas, co-author of Jerry Springer: the Opera.

The two men discussed topics and eventually alighted on one they both found interesting: the short life and early death of Smith.

Elaine Padmore, Covent Garden's director of opera, liked the idea but knew a piece depicting actual named people needed handling with sensitivity.

"Much of Anna Nicole's life is in the public domain, there's masses of stuff on Google.

"But we've had lawyers working with us from the beginning about every aspect of the way it looks and the words we use."

Covent Garden was unusually wary about giving journalists and critics access to the project as it developed, but is confident the show is legally watertight.

All this contrasts with the high-profile poster campaign for the opera, showing the Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westerbroek glamorously made up as the star.

'Tough life'

For now there are only six performances in London but international interest has been great and it is hoped the opera will be seen elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Turnage and Thomas have been doing their best to concentrate on writing a modern opera on a demanding theme aimed at a broad audience - a pretty tough commission even without the legal considerations.

"But it's an opera not a documentary," says Thomas.

"As soon as you put someone on stage and musicalise them, you're also mythologising them. Anna Nicole was already a totally larger-than-life personality."

Turnage, composer of Greek and The Silver Tassie, stresses the work is basically sympathetic to its central character.

"We don't trash her. People might think we're just taking the mickey out of her at Covent Garden. But we show she had a tough life and came from a very poor background".

Turnage says choosing a US topic had two big advantages.

"She was global in a way that, say, Jade Goody in Britain wasn't. Also, for me as a composer, it conjures up a sound world of American music. I'm a big jazz fan for instance and wanted to explore that."

"I've used Peter Erskine, a great jazz drummer, and the guitarist John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin. There are references to jazz, to soul music, to Broadway musicals. It's quite a hybrid."

Astounded and overjoyed

So was his ambition to write an approachable score to bring in new audiences?

"It's more accessible than a lot of my works. And three-quarters of the piece is comic so there'd be no point writing very dour, spiky music," he explains.

The opera has a run of just six performances

Thomas says the challenge was to shift from comedy to "the inevitable horrible and bleak ending".

He also thinks Smith on stage is a far more sympathetic and moving character than people will expect.

"A show like this has to have heart: it can't just be clever. I have a little manifesto for myself: 'If they laugh it's comedy. If they don't it's art. If they leave it's probably satire'."

At Thursday night's world premiere, the audience at Covent Garden had no problem laughing in the first half of the show.

The score feels American, but on the whole it's more evocative of Broadway and of film-music than the jazz Turnage mentions.

If Leonard Bernstein were still alive, he might be writing something like this.

Thomas's libretto is far less scabrous than his work for Jerry Springer: The Opera.

The surtitle screen in the Opera House is only occasionally troubled by four-letter words and the sex-scene mentioned in some early interviews stays hidden out of sight.

As for Smith, she surely would be astounded that her life is no longer soap-opera but opera, but also be overjoyed at the huge publicity.

Anna Nicole runs at the Royal Opera House until 4 March.

Famous for being famous

• Born Vicki Lynn Hogan in Texas in 1967, she married Billy Wayne Smith at 17
• The marriage collapsed after a few years and Smith began working in a topless bar
• She achieved considerable success as a model and was named Playboy's playmate of the year in 1993
• At 26, she met 89-year-old oil tycoon J Howard Marshall, who became her second husband in 1994
• Smith was cast as both a cynical gold-digger and ditzy blonde by the media
• Marshall died 14 months after they married and Smith spent several years battling his family over his fortune
• In 2006 her 20-year-old son Daniel died after an accidental overdose of methadone and anti-depressants. A few days earlier, Smith had given birth to a daughter, who became the subject of a paternity suit

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12503461

[SteveAJones]

Anna Nicole - review

Royal Opera House, London

Rating: Two out of five stars

by Andrew Clements

The Guardian, Friday 18 February 2011

Eva-Maria Westbroek as Anna Nicole and Alan Oke as her billionaire husband in Anna Nicole by Mark-Anthony

Turnage at the Royal Opera House.

Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Nobody could accuse them of not trying hard enough to turn the first performance of Mark-Anthony Turnage's opera on the life of Anna Nicole Smith into an event. Beforehand there was an ample supply of C-list celebrities queuing to be snapped at the entrance in Covent Garden.

And the foyers were festooned with images of the Texan trailer-trash turned Playboy model, who married an 89-year-old billionaire, and lived unhappily ever after until her death four years ago from an overdose. Even the famous red velvet stage curtains were replaced by pink ones monogrammed with Smith's initials, and above the proscenium her portrait was hanging in front of that of the Queen.

Perhaps the hype was all about the ROH convincing itself that the opera which Turnage had delivered was really what they expected when the first cheques were signed five years ago, and what the composer himself had promised in interviews before the first night — a comedy that morphs gradually into tragedy as it unfolds Anna's tawdry life. The ending is undeniably tragic, but perversely unmoving, since most of the music Turnage provides for her never suggests or seems to look for sympathy.

In fact, far too much of his score seems in thrall to the libretto, the work of Richard Thomas, half of the partnership that came up with Jerry Springer: The Opera. That was no opera at all, while at least some of Anna Nicole has the dramatic trappings of opera, but not many. There are very few moments when the drama is driven by the music, when the cartoon-like scenes, with cliche texts and schoolboy humour, are given shape and purpose by Turnage's contribution.

An orchestral interlude in the second act provides a sudden reminder of what he can produce, but otherwise it's necessary to listen to what is churning away beneath the anonymous vocal lines (sub Sondheim when reflective, off-Broadway musical when flippant) to find a real musical personality. The amplification of the singers, "to increase clarity of the words", reinforces the tacky sense of a misfiring musical, and Richard Jones's functional production, designed by Miriam Buether, inhabits a similar two-dimensional world.

Performances are first rate, though Antonio Pappano's role in the pit is mostly to keep the accompaniments motoring along. Eva-Maria Westbroek is Anna Nicole, but gets little chance to explore anything beyond the outlines of this vapid character. Alan Oke is her wheelchair-bound husband; Gerald Finley is her sleazy lawyer turned lover; and Susan Bickley is her man-hating mother, the only character with anything approaching a moral compass. There's an onstage jazz trio (Peter Erskine, John Parricelli and John Paul Jones, no less) who appear briefly and mostly inaudibly in a single short scene. Their presence seems a conceit, but too little of this show seems necessary at all.

http://www.guardian....a-nicole-review

[SteveAJones]

Eva-Maria Westbroek plays the title role in Anna Nicole, Mark-Anthony Turnage's opera about the doomed life of the Playboy model.

Photo Credit: Tristram Kenton

The opera depicts Smith's career as a woman whose surgically enhanced figure became the object of worldwide fascination

Photo Credit: Tristram Kenton

Smith died at the age of just 39 after an overdose; Turnage has

said his aim was to create a story that morphs gradually into tragedy.

The libretto is by Richard Thomas, co-creator of the equally upfront

Jerry Springer: The Opera. Photo Credit: Tristram Kenton

Designed by Miriam Buether, the opera replays Smith's life as a kind of garish cartoon.

Photo Credit: Rex Features/Alastair Muir

[SteveAJones]

As well as a full quotient of strippers, the opera – directed by the flamboyant Richard Jones – features black insect-like creatures with cameras for heads.

Photo Credit: Reuters

One of those cameras can be seen front of stage in the marriage scene, in which Anna Nicole marries 89-year-old oil billionaire J Howard Marshall.

Photo Credit: Tristram Kenton

Alan Oke plays J Howard Marshall. "Turnage seems to have reverted to his old tricks with this flamboyantly vulgar and fabulously

entertaining new work," wrote the Telegraph's critic, awarding it all five stars. Photo Credit: Tristram Kenton

The New York Times's Anthony Tommasini called it "a weirdly inspired work,

an engrossing, outrageous, entertaining and, ultimately, deeply moving new opera"

Photo Credit: Tristram Kenton

[SteveAJones]

Andrew Clements was less sympathetic, awarding the show two stars. "There are very few moments when the drama is

driven by the music, when the cartoon-like scenes, with cliche texts and schoolboy humour, are given shape and purpose," he wrote. Photo Credit: Tristram Kenton

He concluded: "Too little of this show seems necessary at all" Photo Credit: Tristram Kenton

But the story might not be over just yet according to some reports, Smith's estate is considering legal action against the producers, calling the show 'sleazy' and complaining that the family were not consulted. Photo Credit: Reuters

In the meantime, it seems unlikely that the Royal Opera can lose, at least financially: the production has long since sold out. Photo Credit: Tristram Kenton

[SteveAJones]

Opera

Anna Nicole, Royal Opera House, review

Anna Nicole is underpinned by compassion for the eponymous heroine and scorn for forces that mould, and then destroy her, says Rupert Christiansen.

Rating: * * * * *

Eva-Maria Westbroek (Anna Nicole) in Anna Nicole performed at The Royal Opera House Photo: ©Alastair Muir

Alan Oke ( J Howard Marshall II ) Eva-Maria Westbroek (Anna Nicole) in Anna Nicole performed at The Royal Opera House Photo: ©Alastair Muir

Eva-Maria Westbroek (Anna Nicole) in Anna Nicole performed at The Royal Opera House Photo: ©Alastair Muir

Eva-Maria Westbroek (Anna Nicole) and cast in Anna Nicole performed at The Royal Opera House Photo: ©Alastair Muir

Gerald Finley (Stern) Eva-Maria Westbroek (Anna Nicole) in Anna Nicole performed at The Royal Opera House Photo: Alastair Muir

Alan Oke (J Howard Marshall II) Eva-Maria Westbroek (Anna Nicole) Jeremy White (Daddy Hogan) in Anna Nicole performed at The Royal Opera House Photo: ©Alastair Muir

By Rupert Christiansen 11:17PM GMT 17 Feb 2011

Twenty years ago, Mark-Anthony Turnage established himself as an operatic enfant terrible with his brilliant punky adaptation of Steven Berkoff's Greek. Ten years ago, he seemed to have calmed down with a warmer-hearted and more conventional version of Sean O'Casey's First World War tragedy The Silver Tassie.

But middle age takes people different ways, and now Turnage seems to have reverted to his old tricks with this flamboyantly vulgar and fabulously entertaining new work, based on the sad but true story of Anna Nicole Smith, a two-bit, surgically enhanced American stripper, nude model and C-list celebrity who married an 89-year-old billionaire and ended up, at the age of 39, dead from an overdose of prescription drugs in a lonely hotel room.

If I tell you that the libretto was written by Richard Thomas, best known for Jerry Springer: The Opera, the text's clever rhyming couplets, garnished with lashings of potty-mouthed obscenity and sprinkled with flashes of wit, will come as no surprise.

Nor will the Brechtian style: Anna Nicole's story unfolds, through sixteen short scenes, as a moral tale of the idiocies of tabloid culture, interspersed with choric commentary, as the heroine - if that's what she is - passes from small-town Texas to billionaire's ranch and back to rock bottom.

It's often very funny, but it's not just a crude farce with a downbeat ending: I think it is underpinned by genuine compassion for Anna Nicole and genuine scorn for the forces that mould, and then destroy her. What makes this opera so exciting, however, is that Turnage seems to have found precisely the right musical idiom for such a drama - an Americana, brashly orchestrated and violently propulsive which embraces jazz, blues, musical comedy, and lounge smooch so ingeniously and responsively as to transcend mere pastiche. (The more sophisticated may pick up the pointed allusions to Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress too.)

It doesn't set out to be a complex or a subtle score, but it packs an irresistibly visceral punch.

Richard Jones' production is immaculately slick and deliciously imaginative. I loved the day-glo oranges and pinks of Miriam Buether's sets and the strange black insect creatures with cameras for heads who track Anna Nicole's every move.

In the title role, Eva-Maria Westbroek, singing with inexhaustible energy, gives a big-hearted, full-throttle performance which never strikes a false note of sentimentality.

A large and uniformly excellent supporting cast is strongly led by Alan Oke as the pathetically infatuated billionaire Anna Nicole marries, Gerald Finley as her Svengaliesque lawyer and Susan Bickley as her embittered bitch of a mother.

Antonio Pappano conducts with all the required pizzazz, and an enraptured audience did its bit too, rewarding this world premiere with a tumultuous reception.

A masterpiece? I don't know about that: Anna Nicole's impact is so immediate that there's no space to consider if it will bear repeated hearings.

But meanwhile, before posterity makes its judgment, I'll eat my six-gallon hat if it's not a stonking great hit.

http://www.telegraph...use-review.html

[SteveAJones]

Opera Review

'Anna Nicole' Reimagined at Covent Garden

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

New York Times

Published: February 17, 2011

LONDON -- An opera about Anna Nicole Smith--the American sex symbol, Playboy Playmate, hapless model, laughable actress and fortune-hunting wife of a billionaire 62 years her senior? Commissioned by, no less, the Royal Opera at Covent Garden? When the plans were announced it sounded like a dubious idea, a tawdry way for a major opera house to look hip.

"Anna Nicole," the opera by the British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and the British librettist Richard Thomas, finally had its premiere here at the Royal Opera on Thursday night before a sold-out house with standees everywhere. And it proved a weirdly inspired work, an engrossing, outrageous, entertaining and, ultimately, deeply moving new opera. This was an improbable triumph for Covent Garden.

Ideally, opera is supposed to be the ultimate collaborative art form, and "Anna Nicole" met that ideal. At 50, Mr. Turnage, whose modernist music is brashly accessible and run-through with jazz, has written a pulsing, wild and, when called for, yearning score. Mr. Thomas, a musical theater lyricist and composer, is best known for "Jerry Springer: The Opera" . His clever, literate and perceptive libretto for "Anna Nicole" bops along mostly in rhymed couplets, thick with alliterative, everyday profanities. He and Mr. Turnage sensitively navigate the terrain of Anna Nicole's chaotic and sadly pathetic life, which ended in 2007, the result of a fatal mixture of drugs. They lend Smith vulnerability without covering over her crassness.

The conductor Antonio Pappano, the music director of Covent Garden, who shares a passion for jazz with Mr. Turnage, drew an electric, blazing yet wondrously subtle performance from the orchestra. And the director Richard Jones has devised a dazzling, humorous yet humane production, with sets by Miriam Buether that come alive with Day-Glo colors and neon lights, and playfully realistic costumes by Nicky Gillibrand.

Whether the real-life Anna was a tragic figure is debatable. But Mr. Turnage and Mr. Thomas have given us a tragic operatic heroine, a downtrodden nobody determined to make it, to "rape the American dream," as she puts it, any way she can. Anna is in the lineage of Bizet's Carmen, Berg's Lulu and Weill/Brecht's Jenny.

In an effective framing device, the two-act, swiftly-paced opera is presented as a series of interviews with Anna and her circle by a crowd of reporters, here the chorus, costumed to look like tacky correspondents for local television stations. The men wear light gray three-piece suits; the women blue, uniform-like skirts and jackets. Crucial events from Anna's life are enacted in flashbacks. But when people enter the scene prematurely, like her lawyer and later lover Stern (the real-life Howard K. Stern, here the classy baritone Gerald Finley) they are pushed by the chorus into the wings.

After the opening "Scene Zero," in which we hear Mr. Turnage's breathless "three-bar overture," as the librettist dubs its, the chorus of reporters introduce the story by singing sputtered vocal lines in crunchy block chords. We first see Anna in a golden chair, and the soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek, with billowing blonde hair and a lipstick smile, looks uncannily like the real Anna.

Ms. Westbroek has essentially a dramatic soprano voice. Indeed, she is slated to sing Sieglinde in the Metropolitan Opera's upcoming new production of Wagner's "Walküre," her company debut. Anna's music is filled with come-on melodic lines (starting with her first words, when she croons "I want to blow you all a kiss") and decked with frantic coloratura flights when Anna loses control, which is often. Rising to the challenge, Ms. Westbroek gives a vocally commanding and emotionally courageous performance.

An early ensemble scene depicts the hokey life of Mexia, Tex., where Anna was born, and you sympathize with her desire to escape. Her mother, Virgie, a security guard wearing a trim uniform and packing a pistol, is a complex character, especially as played by the mezzo-soprano Susan Bickley. Virgie keeps popping up to voice forebodings about Anna's future and issue some justifiable grievances. When Anna escapes to Houston, meets her first husband Billy (Grant Doyle) at the fried chicken joint where they work and has a baby boy, it is Virgie who winds up raising the child for years.

Maybe it is my slant on things, but Mr. Turnage's music is the primary reason that so much seemed so right in "Anna Nicole." There are flashes of Weill in the clattering, cabaret-like scenes when the reporters, wielding microphones, mutter like a Greek chorus; and jazzy sneering brass writing in the scene with the dancers at the "gentleman's club" in Houston. At times Mr. Turnage's connection to the British modernist school of complex composers like Harrison Birtwistle comes through. The more reflective passages often take the surprising form of beguiling, varied waltzes.

Mr. Turnage and Mr. Thomas have come up with a slew of operatic characters that singers are going to relish, as this cast did. Mr. Finley was riveting as the calculating lawyer Stern, who one moment despairs of trying to control Anna's over-eating and drug dependencies, and the next moment schemes to hype her for the cameras. In one scene he concocts a plan to turn the birth of Anna's daughter, who arrived not long before Anna's death, into a live pay-per-view special.

The tenor Alan Oke nailed the role of the oil billionaire J. Howard Marshall II, who was 89 when he married the 26-year-old divorced Anna. Here J. Howard literally descends into Anna's life sitting in an oversized chair suspended on wires. Mr. Oke's insinuating singing captured the flickers of arousal embedded in the fidgety vocal lines of the smitten codger. After marrying Anna, J. Howard dies suddenly during a raucous party scene, dressed in a ridiculous gold Mylar suit, without having left a will.

Anna's son, Daniel, first appears as a boy, a silent role played endearingly by Andrew Gilbert. The teenage Daniel is played by Dominic Rowntree as a sullen, sweet-faced young man clearly hooked on drugs. When he has a seizure and dies in the hospital room where is mother had given birth to his half-sister just days earlier, the scene is made more wrenching by Mr. Turnage's understated, harmonically piercing music. Mr. Rowntree's only lines come after Daniel has died, when, his head peering from a body bag, he sings a litany of drug names.

In another inspired, if creepy touch, choreographed by Aletta Collins, black-clad dancers wearing television camera headdresses increasingly follow Anna around as she becomes the object of media obsession and ridicule.

Covent Garden may have overplayed the opera's sensational elements of sex and drugs in its marketing campaign, though "Anna Nicole" can probably claim to be breaking new ground in the scene when Anna receives breast implant surgery from the fast-talking Doctor Yes (a vibrant Andrew Rees). The libretto has countless lines that can not be printed in a family newspaper. And "Anna Nicole" revels shamelessly in the crass, sleazy side of American culture, which may be a too-easy target. The London audience ate it up. But so did I, because in the end this is a musically rich, audacious and inexplicably poignant work.

The ovations were tumultuous. Who says the Royal Opera takes itself too reverently? Pictures of Ms. Westbroek as the smiling Anna were everywhere. The house's elegant stage curtain is usually emblazoned with "ER II," the emblem of Queen Elisabeth. On this night the emblem on the substitute curtain was "A n R," for Anna Nicole Rex. Why not? Anna is now an unlikely operatic queen. Besides, I doubt that Her Majesty will be attending this show.

"Anna Nicole" runs at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden through March 4; roh.org.uk

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/arts/music/19nicole.html?_r=1

[SteveAJones]

Royal Opera's 'Anna Nicole' misses the inner beauty

By Anne Midgette

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, February 17, 2011; 11:10 PM

LONDON - Anna Nicole Smith, the late celebrity personality of tabloid fame, had many ambitions, but gracing the curtain of the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden here was probably not among them.

On Thursday night, though, she was not only on the curtain, but also all over the theater. The carved statues on the balconies sported her face; items of her personal attire (including an amazingly large bra) were displayed in the glass cases in the foyer; and her headshot was even superimposed over the royal medallion above the proscenium. And, of course, she was onstage, as the protagonist of a brand-new opera based on her life and called simply "Anna Nicole."

Overkill? Sure. Smith (who died in 2007, at age 39) was all about overkill. Yet Thursday's glitz seemed a little square. Even as Covent Garden festooned itself with her face, the company seemed bent on trying to play down the excitement, not quite prepared for the media glare that such a venture was bound to incite. It was like the class nerd trying to get the cool kids' attention with last year's fashions (Anna Nicole's story is, after all, hardly new), and then not knowing what to do when the attention comes her way.

The attention was certainly there, and the producers were probably happy at the end of the night, hearing the cheers and wolf whistles of the crowd. But the applause was more for the surface glitz than for a work of art. The hope for "Anna Nicole" was that the creators - Mark-Anthony Turnage, a major compositional voice in classical music today with a bad-boy streak, and Richard Thomas, whose last pop-culture venture was "Jerry Springer: The Opera" - would transform their subject into effective theater. Instead, the material ended up mastering them. They documented Anna Nicole's life with dogged persistence, but they neglected to provide one piece of information: why anybody should care.

For the first few, happy minutes, it did look as if they were going to pull it off. The curtain rose on the chorus - dressed in airline-stewardess blue and shiny gray, lined up across the front of the stage - which sang a wry, moralizing summary of Anna Nicole's life that was peppered with laugh lines that were actually funny and set to music that was energetic, syncopated and lively. If the evening had maintained this level of energy and humorous self-awareness, it would have been a triumph.

But alas, as soon as the actual story began, the opera fell like a failed souffle. By deliberately opting for a TV-biopic approach, it became the latest entry in the lists of failed biographical operas: It presented such events like items on a checklist, acted out by two-dimensional characters that never - despite a fine cast - came to life.

If you have a singer as gifted as the Canadian baritone Gerald Finley (who played Anna Nicole's lawyer and sometime lover, Howard K. Stern) performing a monologue over roving strata of dark low winds, and it fails to make a dramatic effect, you're doing something wrong. There was certainly nothing wrong with Finley's singing, or his attempts to find significance in Thomas's empty text. Turnage, too, seemed hampered by his librettist. He's an eminently dramatic composer, and his music was full of touches evoking other great dramatic composers (Britten and Bernstein, to name two), as well as different musical styles: a honky-tonk love duet for Anna Nicole and her first husband; a sinuously seductive waltzlike paean to food sung by Anna Nicole in her later, more zaftig years; and all kinds of jazz-inspired lines snaking around the score.

But both he and Thomas shied away from what should have been the opera's main tasks: characterizing Anna Nicole, and her relationship with Stern, in music. They kept taking refuge in dramatic distractions (an aria by Anna Nicole's mother, Virgie, sung by Susan Bickley, about how much she hates men) but hardly ever hauled off and let Anna Nicole have a real aria or explained her relationship with Stern. Perhaps they were too afraid of offending the living to actually take a stand about the inner life of their title character. In the wordless Intermezzo that divides Act II, the music suddenly became vital again, as if Turnage had been able, at last, to cut loose.

A lot of serious talent went into creating this unsatisfying evening, led by Antonio Pappano, the Royal Opera House's excellent music director, in the pit. Eva-Maria Westbroek threw herself into the title role with everything she had, including gams and a pair of alarming fake breasts so ill-fitting they would have shamed any self-respecting drag queen. Her voice was firm and shining and not displayed, by this score, to particular advantage. (Her next role is Sieglinde in the new "Walkuere" at the Metropolitan Opera in April.

The smaller parts had some more grateful moments, notably J. Howard Marshall II, Anna Nicole's octogenarian billionaire husband, sung by Alan Oke with an appropriate wiry toughness; the four buxom lap dancers who, when Anna Nicole starts working in a sex club, instruct her in the rudiments of their art; or Doctor Yes, the plastic surgeon who created Smith's rack (windily sung by Andrew Rees).

Richard Jones, the director, followed the lead of the creators in wavering between presenting the facts and giving them a hint of an auteur's spin: the candy-pink walls, zebra-print chairs and giant mattress seemed to come out of several different operas.

The sex-club scene, incidently, harked back to another work of music theater based on the true story of a stripper turned superstar: "Gypsy." The reference might even have been intentional. It was unfortunate, though, since "Gypsy" has the developed characters and relationships and musical numbers that "Anna Nicole" lacks. That's why "Gypsy" is about to be filmed with Barbra Streisand, while "Anna Nicole" remains a chronic underachiever, its potential left untapped.

At best, it is a kind of exhibit of American mores written by Brits for a British audience that, on Thursday, wanted very much to like it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/17/AR2011021707788.html

[SteveAJones]

It's Larger Than Life, But Is It Opera?

The world of opera is no stranger to tragedy and drama but never before has a

controversial Playboy pin-up been the star of the show.

Kat Higgins, Sky News Online, Royal Opera House

9:56am UK, Friday February 18, 2011

The Royal Opera House's latest offering is a biography of the life and death of the glamour model Anna Nicole Smith.

Called Anna Nicole, it is perhaps the opera company's most daring production yet at Covent Garden, as it explores the themes of drug addiction, money and fame.

The audiences at the Anna Nicole premiere on Thursday were no doubt intrigued by the description of the show as 'provocative in its themes, exciting in its bravura style and thrilling with its sheer contemporary nerve'.

The show is most certainly provocative with its choice of language and, at times, explicit scenes but the question remains as to whether this is a true opera.

The opera tells the tragic story of the one-time pole dancer

Although the singing is fantastic and the Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek is excellent as the story's buxom, tragic heroine, the music is less memorable.

Writer Mark Anthony Turnage, who won an Olivier award for The Silver Tassie in 2000, was not short of material for his latest creation.

Born Vickie Lynn Hogan in 1967 in Texas, Smith dropped out of school and married a co-worker at Jim's Krispy Fried Chicken.

Then after a breast enhancement she pursued a career as a pole dancer and glamour model.

It was while pole dancing in 1994 that she met her next husband, 89-year-old oil billionaire J Howard Marshall II. She was then 26.

The production explores the themes of drug addiction, money and fame

Although the couple claimed to be deeply in love, there was, unsurprisingly, much cynicism about the marriage and after Marshall's death the following year, Smith became locked in a long-running dispute over her inheritance with his son.

In 2006, three days after Smith gave birth to a daughter (the father was later named as Larry Birkhead) her 20-year-old son Daniel died while at her bedside in the Bahamas.

He had accidentally overdosed on a combination of drugs, including methadone.

A heartbroken Smith died less than five months later in Florida, again of an accidental drug overdose.

The six performances of Anna Nicole have sold out

It was difficult to tell whether the writer and director was trying to create a comedic, farcical version of Anna Nicole Smith's life or whether it was meant to be a true representation of the events.

One specifically controversial lyric was when Smith's son Daniel died and Westbroek and the chorus sang: "The mind boggles, the mind warps, you wake up cuddling your own son's corpse."

Unsurprisingly, the production has grappled with legal issues.

The dispute over Marshall's money continues, with her young daughter Dannielynn now the named party in the case.

In the meantime, the six performances of Anna Nicole are sold out and depending on the reviews the Royal Opera House will consider whether they have a gap between Carmen and Swan Lake for a few more shows.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Showbiz-News/Opera-Anna-Nicole-Premiere-At-Royal-Opera-House-Covent-Garden/Article/201102315935791?lpos=Showbiz_News_First_Home_Article_Teaser_Region_4&lid=ARTICLE_15935791_Opera_Anna_Nicole_Premiere_At_Royal_Opera_House_Covent_Garden

[SteveAJones]

Why Anna Nicole is the perfect subject for an opera

By Joan Smith

Belfast Telegraph

Friday, 11 February 2011

Her first husband was 16, her second 89. Her life story was a soap opera involving breast implants, Playboy centrefolds, strip clubs, lawsuits, TV shows, threats of bankruptcy and premature death.

Next week, these events will be replayed on stage when Anna Nicole: The Opera opens in London. I, for one, can't wait to see it.

The libretto has been written by Richard Thomas, whose previous forays into American popular culture include writing Jerry Springer: The Opera.

But Thomas is clear that he wants audiences to feel sympathy for Anna Nicole Smith: "You have to feel that she wasn't just this cartoon," he says.

And, if it seems incongruous for opera to tackle the story of a stripper and glamour model dismissed in her lifetime as "white trash", that's because it's easy to overlook the genuinely tragic elements in the biographies of working-class women like Smith and Jade Goody.

Smith's story is as sad as any of Verdi's or Puccini's heroines. She came from a broken home, got next to no education, married for the first time at 17 and had a baby before she was 20.

One of the saddest things about her life is that the summit of her ambition was to follow in the footsteps of Marilyn Monroe.

Dead blondes don't make good role models and the breast implants Smith got to promote her career as a model resulted in chronic back pain and a reliance on painkillers.

Her marriage to a fabulously wealthy (and octogenarian) oil tycoon was regarded with tight-lipped disapproval, in spite of that she spoke of him with seemingly genuine affection.

When Smith asked for half her husband's $1.6bn fortune after his death - plenty of dosh to go round, you might think - she was resisted all the way to the Supreme Court by her stepson. I'm still not clear why wanting a share of the estate makes her a 'gold-digger'.

Smith's death, at the age of 39 from an overdose of prescription drugs, happened not long after a tragedy of jaw-dropping proportions: the death of her son, also from an overdose, in her hospital room not long after she gave birth to her daughter.

A year later, Goody, the former Big Brother contestant, died of cervical cancer at the age of 28, a circumstance that transformed her previously hostile public image.

Both deaths were avoidable, had they known more about their bodies or been given better advice, and between them they left behind two young sons (Goody) and a five-month-old daughter (Smith).

Grand opera likes its heroines less ambiguous than this. Working-class women and high-class prostitutes know their fate, which is to expire beautifully and release the men who have fallen in love with them.

Many times I've sat in opera houses, moved by the music but wishing that Mimi or Butterfly would get angry and give their lovers a piece of their mind.

What's heartbreaking about Smith and Goody is their working-class feistiness, along with glimpses of an intelligence that might have been turned to less risky ends if they'd had a better start in life.

Smith was an adventuress, an old-fashioned word that suits the gusto with which she threw herself into one experience after another; she was also a self-made woman, destroyed halfway through her life by the very aspirations that drive popular culture.

That she didn't survive beyond her thirties is a modern morality tale; perfect material for opera in an age when celebrity is both a lure and a trap.

http://www.belfastte...l#ixzz1EJaNGGvV

[SteveAJones]

Review

Anna Nicole, the opera: She aims to sleaze

By MIKE SILVERMAN For the Associated Press

Houston Chronicle Feb. 18, 2011, 6:39AM

LONDON — Why write an opera about the sordid life and death of Anna Nicole Smith? That question doubtless leaped to the minds of many when they heard the Royal Opera had commissioned such a work.

And sad to say, despite the expenditure of considerable talent and money — and a splendid performance by Eva-Maria Westbroek in the title role — the question remains unanswered following the world premiere of Anna Nicole at Covent Garden on Thursday night.

For anyone who may have forgotten, Smith was a single mother from Mexia, Texas, and former Houstonian who, thanks to breast enhancement surgery, became a Playboy celebrity and married an oil tycoon 63 years her senior.

Her claim on his fortune was disputed by his heirs, and in 2007 — after giving birth (on pay-per-view TV) and seeing her 20-year-old son die of an overdose in her hospital room — she herself, grossly overweight, died of a drug overdose at age 39.

To be sure, Smith's willingness to go to any lengths to lift herself out of poverty and her lifelong obsession with publicity have a lurid quality that seems almost mythic. That's apparently what attracted librettist Richard Thomas and composer Mark-Anthony Turnage when they were looking for a subject for an opera.

But it's not enough to put the spectacle of her life on stage in a chronological narrative, dressed up with satiric jabs at obvious targets and occasional attempts to indict society at large for enabling Anna's career. We may feel pity for her, along with disgust, but those are not responses that redeem the tawdry spectacle of her life. In this retelling of her story, it's hard to empathize with her, much less imagine her as a figure of tragedy.

Thomas has written a sometimes-clever, sometimes-sophomoric libretto very much in the vein of his popular hit, "Jerry Springer: The Opera."

A typical sample is Anna's introductory line: "I want to blow you all — a kiss." (These are also her final words before being zipped into a body bag at the end.)

Fighting words vs. America

In a more serious, but not necessarily more persuasive vein, Thomas has Anna exclaim near the end: "Oh, America, you dirty whore. I gave you everything but you wanted more.

Turnage, a respected composer of two previous operas, has set Thomas's words to a tuneful, percussive score that is highly accessible on first hearing. His orchestration includes a role for jazz trio — a bass guitar, guitar and drums — that helps blur the lines between "serious" music and a more popular sound. Antonio Pappano, the Royal Opera's music director, conducts with seeming mastery.

There are some striking lyrical moments, as when Anna sings an aria of delight after receiving her new breasts (before the resulting back pain has led to her painkiller addiction.) And there's a lovely ensemble to conclude Act 1 as Anna and her billionaire husband, J. Howard Marshall II, stand atop a wedding cake while distorted strains of Mendelssohn play and various characters express their thoughts.

There's also a gorgeous, melancholy interlude midway through Act 2, marking the passage of 10 years as a curtain covered with double cheeseburgers shows Anna's figure giving way to the obesity of later years.

Westbroek, a Dutch soprano much admired in the standard repertory of Wagner, Verdi and Puccini, throws herself into the title role with all of her considerable assets. On stage for virtually the entire two-hour length of the opera, Westbroek sings with luminous tone and creates a plausible sex symbol with her blond hair and glamorous figure (before she has to put on a fat suit for the later scenes). There's also a disarming sincerity and eagerness to please about her that make the character more appealing than she might otherwise be.

Among the supporting cast, mezzo-soprano Susan Bickley makes a sympathetic figure as Anna's loyal but critical mother, Virgie ("My flesh, my blood, my embarrassment," she sings at one point). Tenor Alan Oke as Marshall makes a splendid entrance flying in from the wings in an over-sized armchair and revels with unabashed glee at buying Anna's sexual favors.

This just in from Doctor Yes

As Anna's surgeon, Doctor Yes, tenor Andrew Rees has fun with his aria describing the differences in cup sizes ("A is small, no use at all ... ." Dominic Rowntree, as Anna's grown-up son, Daniel, doesn't get to sing until after he's dead. Then he has a brief aria, the words of which consist of a list of all the drugs found in his system — Valium, Prozac and about 20 others.

The opera's most problematic character is Anna's lawyer-turned-boyfriend, Howard K. Stern. Portrayed by baritone Gerald Finley, he makes brief appearances in Act 1 but without much purpose.

Even in Act 2, the part seems underwritten — as if the creators couldn't quite decide whether to make him more villain or sorrowful witness to Anna's demise.

Director Richard Jones has given the work a lively, fast-moving production, especially in the first and vastly more entertaining half, which traces Anna's rise in jaunty, energetic fashion.

Though the Royal Opera warned of "extreme language, drug abuse and sexual content," there's little on stage to shock, some rough language aside. Even the sex act to which Anna's opening lines teasingly refer takes place with the chorus tactfully concealing her and Marshall from view. There are five more performances through March 4, all of them sold out.

http://www.chron.com...re/7433237.html

[SteveAJones]

London critics give Anna Nicole Smith opera thumbs-up

From: AFP

February 18, 2011

Anna Nicole Smith, played by Eva-Maria Westbroek, receives a kiss from J. Howard Marshall II played by Alan Oke at the curtain call of Anna Nicole: An Opera in Two Acts in London. Picture: AP Source: AP

AN opera on the tragic life of former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith has been applauded by critics on its premiere at London's prestigious Royal Opera House.

"Anna Nicole" charts the tumultuous life and death of the former glamour model who first hit the world's headlines in 1994 when she married 89-year-old oil tycoon J Howard Marshall.

"It's often very funny, but it's not just a crude farce with a downbeat ending," the Telegraph's Rupert Christiansen said.

"It is underpinned by genuine compassion for Anna Nicole and genuine scorn for the forces that mould, and then destroy her.

Marshall died in 1995, sparking a long and acrimonious battle over the multi-millionaire's fortune. The Texas born stripper died of a drug overdose in 2007 aged 39.

Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek was lauded by Christiansen for playing the lead role "with inexhaustible energy...which never strikes a false note of sentimentality".

Jessica Duchen, the Independent's reviewer, was equally enthusiastic after witnessing "the most hotly anticipated night in contemporary opera in years"."It's a tremendous show, fast-paced, spare and concentrated," Duchen wrote. "She's not only a tragic heroine: she the rise and fall of western excess itself.

"Westbroek is a startlingly innocent Anna, caught in demoniac forces...beyond her control," she added.

The central London venue is one of the most famous opera houses in the world, but is better known for showcasing the talents of Verdi and Mozart rather than topless models.

The opera is the creation of British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and lyricist Richard Thomas, who upset Christian groups in 2003 with his contribution to production "Jerry Springer: The Opera."

"She wasn't just this dumb blonde," Turnage told CNN. "Her life touches on so many things, it seemed to encapsulate the 21st century."

The opera lingers on the death of Smith's son, Daniel, who died of a suspected drug overdose in 2006 while visiting his mother and newly-born half-sister in a Bahamas hospital.

"It's a very universal story," Thomas told CNN. "I wanted to tell a story about a single mom. She makes some good choices. She makes some bad choices. Then she runs out of choices.

"It is a rags-to-riches story and a cautionary tale all chucked into a blender and whooshed up with three bags of sugar and two bottles of tequila and poured over a two-hour time frame," Thomas added.

Elaine Padmore, director of opera at the Royal Opera House, called Smith's story "an opera for our times."

http://www.theaustra...from=public_rss