Mark-Anthony Turnage, Anna Nicole (2011)

First question: is this really a contemporary opera about Anna Nicole Smith? It sure is! Second question: seriously, is this a joke? Well, if it's a joke, it's a joke commissioned and produced by the Royal Opera House and starring Eva-Maria Westbroek. So...really not a joke at all. And actually, the concept fits neatly into the operatic tradition. La traviata. It's the single most-performed opera in the world. And it's based on the life-story of a woman who had only recently died who was considered to be morally disreputable (yes, filtered through Dumas and then the censors, but STILL). And in terms of character, there are obvious comparisons to operatic women like Lulu or Manon Lescaut. So I think this is a wholly justifiable operatic subject.

But, of course, that's only in theory. How is it in practice? It follows Smith's life fairly closely, but--inevitably--in a kind of fragmented, postmodern way: her humble origins, success as a Playboy centerfold (first last and only breast augmentation sequence you'll ever see in an opera), marriage to an eighty-nine-year-old billionaire and subsequent lawsuits with his family, involvement with her sleazy lawyer, the death of her twenty-year-old son by overdose, and her own subsequent death by same months later.

So obviously, all of us are products of our environment, but somehow that seems more obviouswith someone like Smith: our toxic culture made her and then broke her. The opera is very good at bringing this across, while at the same time depicting it in an exhilarating way. Her story is a tragedy, but you can't pretend that there isn't an awful lot of black humor here. I would also say, however, that it does a good job of representing her humanity--certainly, Westbroek is electrifying in a role that requires laying bare all kinds of vulnerabilities.

I...kind of loved this? Is that right? I'm not quite sure. It's hard to really conceptualize this as being in the same tradition as Mozart or Puccini. As seems to be the norm, it took me a while to get into the idiom of the opera, but once I did, I was very impressed. The music is quite a thing, veering between jazziness (with, inevitably, a certain amount of striptease music) and drama and comedy. I don't know Turnage from Adam, but he seems like quite a composer. The cast is all strong; most of the roles other than the title are pretty small, but Gerald Finley (who sang the lead in Doctor Atomic) is good as Howard Stern (not that one), her lawyer; and Alan Oke is weirdly sympathetic as her geriatric husband.

I dunno; this is only the fourth contemporary opera I've seen, so I'm really in no position to judge, but I find it fairly easy to say that it's the best one so far.