The Telegraph reports that the creative team behind "Jerry Springer - The Opera" are to write and stage an opera at the ROH on the life of Anna Nicole Smith in 2010.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/04/nsmith404.xml

Presumably not wishing to be upstaged by GADDAFI and similar projects, the ROH is throwing down the glove?  I wonder what kind of glove this will turn-out to be?   Personally I cackled through most of SPRINGER (although there were some longeurs in the second half) quite happily, although it never was an opera of course.  It began on the Fringe, and always looked like it belonged there (which is no sin at all). But can this same team produce an ROH hit?  (There's no word from the ROH itself anywhere in the piece.  I am guessing that it's a piece for the Linbury, and not the main house?  If the NT can spawn shows which go on to earn big bucks in West End transfers - presumably what the ROH has in mind here? - then why can't the ROH join this club?)

There's a slightly voyeuristic element in the subject-matter which leaves me a bit uneasy - it inhabits the same kind of world as THE BALLAD OF BABY DOE, but without the passing of a reasonable amount of time after the demise of the title character.  I wonder if Ms Smith's relatives have been consulted?

Perhaps they didn't want to hit readers with too much depressing news all at once.

Well actually, harpy, I did quite like The Silver Tassie and in particular the big central Act which I thought, and still think, was really quite powerful and effective. I was less impressed perhaps with the two surrounding Acts which did seem open to the charge that they were more like a play with music added, raising the question 'why?'. But I didn't think they were that bad.

I have however discovered that this enthusiasm is not shared in all quarters of the new music world so I tend to keep it to myself unless I've got a clear run to the exit doors.

 

Who would be a good composer to compose an opera about Anna whatsername then?

I stopped looking at all once I'd seen it was by George Garnett.