Anna Nicole

WESTBROEK; BICKLEY; WHITE; OKE; FINLEY; BICKLEY; LIXENBERG; HOARE; DE PONT DAVIES; ROWNTREE; COOK; REES; DOYLE; EVANS; L

The rise and fall of Anna Nicole Smith was a tawdry saga ripe for operatic burlesque. Lest you’ve forgotten, she was a bimbo from a Texas backwater who went from lap dancer in a cheap dive, to Playboy magazine centerfold (with the help of enormous breast implants), to the 26-year-old bride of an 89-year-old oil billionaire, to a fat, pathetic media celebrity whose every move (including her involvement in a long legal battle with her late husband’s relatives as to who would inherit his vast fortune) made her the sleaze-goddess of reality TV. Having lost her son, Daniel, to a drug overdose, she herself died in a drug-and-alcohol-fueled stupor, in 2007. The British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage has long been attracted to bleak, violent, shocking subject-matter, witness his opera Greek, a gritty East End, London updating of the Oedipus myth, based on Steven Berkoff’s play. Turnage and his librettist, Richard Thomas, place the monstrous vulgarity of Anna Nicole’s life and death front and center in a work that, on DVD, at least (I missed it in the theater) is more jokey, mocking vaudeville than an opera per se. Turnage’s score makes a natural fit, incorporating various vernacular idioms (jazz, rock, blues) into his characteristically hard-edged, post-modernist style; the music is appealing even when the events depicted on stage are not. As you might expect from Thomas, who co-authored Jerry Springer The Opera, the text is full of sexual innuendo, scabrously funny, and relentlessly foul-mouthed. (Anna Nicole’s opening line is “I want to blow you all… a kiss.” Son Daniel sings an anti-lyrical aria in which he catalogues the drugs he has ingested.) Everything, including the staging of the British director Richard Jones, with its garishly-colored production design, is excessive. Which is precisely the point: Who was Anna Nicole but an odiously over-the-top creation of the tacky, sensation-seeking American pop culture that produced her? Anna Nicole was commissioned by the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, where the opera received its world premiere on 17 February 2011, and was recorded for release on DVD at two public performances given a few days later. The quick camera work accentuates the breathless dramatic pacing, cartoonish for much of its length (two acts, each about 55 minutes), turning more somber and serious towards the end, by which point the TV reporters to whom Anna has been relating her exploits from the opera’s outset have multiplied into a hoard of “people cameras,” rabid for ever more sensationalistic blood. The admirable Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek brings lyrical luster and dramatic thrust to the titular heroine, fully inhabiting her character right down to a convincing Texas accent. The Canadian baritone Gerald Finley looks rather too much like a nice-guy hero-type to be fully convincing as Stern, Anna’s sleazoid lawyer-lover, but his singing and acting also cannot be faulted. The large cast includes 26 singers, including cameos from individual choristers. Of the supporting players, one must reserve special commendation for Susan Bickley as Anna’s long-suffering mother, Virgie. Conductor Antonio Pappano and his fine orchestra and chorus throw themselves very capably into the flamboyant spirit of the proceedings. The audience appear to be enjoying themselves immensely. Picture and sound quality are excellent. DVD extras include a cast gallery and “production insights” from Pappano, Turnage, Westbroek, and other members of the artistic team. Besides warning consumers that Anna Nicole “contains explicit language and scenes of a sexual nature,” the DVD box cautions that this is a “limited edition.” So, snap it up while you can. The opera is a raunchy good romp.

Price: $42.98

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