Intermezzo

a pair of massive boobs

Only 67,700 viewers (0.33% of the total audience) watched the BBC4 broadcast of Anna Nicole on Friday night. The introductory documentary, Fallen Women, fared little better with just 69,600.

Anna Nicole on BBC4

Tomorrow (Friday) night at 9pm, BBC4 air the hotly-anticipated TV premiere of Anna Nicole, as recorded at the Royal Opera House.

It's preceded at 8.30pm by a potted history of opera tarts, Opera's Fallen Women, presented by Antonio Pappano.

More broadcast times are listed here, and it should emerge on the iPlayer at some point too.

Anna Nicole round 2

Anna Nicole - Royal Opera House, 1 March 2011

Ultimately I'm not any more convinced by Anna Nicole as a work than I was on opening night, but at least a second listen opened my ears to more references in the score, from Mahler to - ahem - Bryan Adams.

Anna Nicole ( . Y . ) premiere - have the Royal Opera House boobed?

Anna Nicole - Royal Opera House, 17 February 2011 (world premiere)

After weeks of sustained hype, the like of which the Royal Opera House has never seen, the most impressive thing about the Anna Nicole show is its polish.

Richard Jones's splashy, cartoonish production is Vegas-perfect. It catches the eye and tells the story, in a series of tightly-focussed interviews to camera. The orchestra plays immaculately (so far as I could tell on a first-time listen) for Pappano and the cast is unsurpassable from top to bottom.

Anna Nicole the Opera ( . Y . ) video

The Daily Telegraph has a few video clips from Anna Nicole (if I can work out how to embed the video, I'll do so later). The version above has a talkie track over most of the music.

Anna Nicole's estate to sue Royal Opera House?

That's what Perez Hilton says!

And Perez is always right!

(well, nearly always)

Is it true that Anna Nicole's estate are so unhappy with the way she's been portrayed that they plan to take legal action? 

Guess we'll find out soon!

Anna Nicole the Opera ( . Y . ) in photos

Mark-Anthony Turnage's new opera Anna Nicole opened at the Royal Opera House tonight with even more celebs in the seats than on the stage. Cameras and TV crews lurked in the foyer to catch the varied likes of Graham Norton, Dame Vivienne Westwood, Mike Leigh and Boy George as they entered. Is this what the ROH mean by attracting a new audience? I'd love to know how many people apart from me actually paid for their seats. Sadly, although the ROH scored the coup of luring John Paul Jones to play bass on stage, his Them Crooked Vultures colleagues Dave Grohl and Josh Homme were nowhere to be seen.

I'll write more about the opera - or is it a musical? - later, but here are some before, during and after photos to be going on with.

Anna Nicole ( . Y . ) the students review

 
If you haven't done so already, check out the comments section of an earlier post, Anna Nicole - calling all students,  where you can find reviews by students who attended Saturday's dress rehearsal of Anna Nicole at the Royal Opera House. More reviews/comments are welcome!

Anna Nicole passes ROH spellcheck test

 
 
Another Royal Opera House website fail:

“Anna Nicole” won’t be so robustly scatological, although the Royal Opera warns on its Web site of “extreme language, drug abuse and sexual content.” The site nonetheless described the show as “a celebratory story of our times.” What exactly is it celebrating?

“Er, that’s a mistake,” Ms. Padmore said. “It’s meant to say ‘a celebrity story of our times,’ which is nearer the mark.” The wording on the site has since been changed accordingly.

Michael White, New York Times

Anna Nicole - the amplified voice

Eva-Maria Westbroek's bewbs won't be the only artificially enhanced assets in Covent Garden's new Anna Nicole.

The Royal Opera House plan to take the rare step of adding vocal amplification, more usually associated with West End musicals, to ensure Richard Thomas's all-important words can be heard above Mark-Anthony Turnage's bold and brassy orchestration.

Of course miking opera singers is nothing new, as anyone familiar with contemporary American work will know. But it's still rare, especially at Covent Garden. The last production in which it was publicly acknowledged was 2009's Lulu, where sparing amplification was employed for certain upstage action. 

The FT's perenially-astute Mr Bernheimer complains amplification creates "grotesque distortion" in the Met's current Nixon in China. Will Anna Nicole fare any better?

Anna Nicole - calling all students !

 
Students! Are you going to the Royal Opera House's Anna Nicole rehearsal on Saturday morning (12 February)?

Lots of sad old people will be dying to know how it goes. So if you'd like to share anything here - from a brief comment to a full review - please do! You can use the comment feature below or email me at inter-mezzo@hotmail.co.uk .

 

***UPDATE***  check out comments for first reactions (more welcome, so please comment!)

Anna Nicole sells (out)

 
Yup, it seems as if a dead blonde with knockers the size of most women's heads and a brain the size of most women's knockers has succeeded where Mozart, Rossini and Humperdinck have failed.

In a season when even the classics are failing to fill Covent Garden seats, there are barely a handful of tickets remaining for Anna Nicole, which opens at the Royal Opera House next week. And it's not even as if anyone's heard it yet.

It would be nice to think that the combined talents of Mark-Anthony Turnage, Richard Thomas, Richard Jones, Antonio Pappano, Eva-Maria Westbroek, Gerald Finley et al have reeled in the buyers. But the truth is that (ROH-fed) press coverage over the past few weeks has focussed more on pole dancers and blow jobs than plot points and harmonic language. That's what has turned an initially slow seller into a must-see for many who probably wouldn't bother with opera normally.

Still, it's testament to the curiosity and perennial optimism of the theatregoing public - and one in the eye for those who claim modern opera doesn't sell.

Royal Opera House winter season 2010-11

The Royal Opera House's winter season opens for general booking soon, and it's a bit more interesting than the dismal fare on offer in the autumn.

There are three new productions, the first of which is David McVicar's Adriana Lecouvreur. This opens on 18 November and will, we are promised, be set in period (late 18th century). The production has been built around Angela Gheorghiu in the title role, though the form book suggests you're more likely to see Ángeles Blancas Gulín, who also headlines the last few dates. Angela joins her co-star Jonas Kaufmann for a couple of concert performances in Berlin before hitting Covent Garden. Will they warm her up or tire her out? Who knows. They're joined by a solid-looking supporting cast, which includes Michaela Schuster, Olga Borodina and Alessandro Corbelli. Mark Elder conducts.

After last year's disappointing Dutchman, Tim Albery gets another crack at Wagner, this time with a new Tannhäuser, opening on 11 December. Semyon Bychkov conducts Johan Botha as Tannhäuser, Eva-Maria Westbroek as Elisabeth, Michaela Schuster as Venus, Christof Fischesser as Herrmann and Christian Gerhaher in his ROH debut as Wolfram. Gerhaher trained as a doctor before he took up singing, so Angela Gheorghiu won't have too far to go for her sick note.

Photos of set designs for Adriana Lecouvreur and Tannhäuser may be found at this link (page 37).

Leiser and Caurier's Il barbiere di Siviglia is revived from 18 January 2011. The cast is less starry than last time round, but Aleksandra Kurzak as Rosina, Levente Molnár as Figaro, and John Osborn and Luciano Botelho sharing the role of Count Almaviva should make it worth seeing.

Oddly, David McVicar's name is missing from the credits on the ROH website, but it's his Die Zauberflöte which is showing from 1 February. The main reason to revisit has to be the conductor - Sir Colin Davis. The cast includes Joseph Kaiser, Kate Royal, and Christopher Maltman, with Marina Rebeka (recently a highly-praised fill-in for la Gheorghiu) as Queen of the Night.

The final new production of the winter season, the world premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage's Anna Nicole, opens on 17 February. Eva-Maria Westbroek's physical resemblance to Anna Nicole Smith is so uncanny it's almost a bonus that she's such one of the world's greatest sopranos too. A supporting cast which includes Alan Oke, Gerald Finley, Susan Bickley and Lore Lixenberg isn't bad news either. Pappano conducts, Richard Jones directs, and the ROH keenly draw attention to "extreme language, drug abuse and sexual content". It's priced to sell: £75 tops, with many seats under £30. Will Turnage dig further into the oeuvre of Beyonce Knowles for inspiration? Wait and see.

Could Katie Price be the Royal Opera House's Anna Nicole Smith?

Ever since the Royal Opera House announced their plans for a Mark-Anthony Turnage opera based on the life of Anna Nicole Smith (or at least since the press went to town on it 10 months later ) the casting has been hotly debated.

Who could possibly do justice to the title role? Who has enough air between her ears, extensions on her head and silicon in her bewbs to recreate the billionaire-humping legend?

Step forward Katie Price (for the elderly, aka Jordan):

"I'm going to sing an opera song - even Pete (husband Peter Andre) says I could sing better in opera than in pop." she told the Daily Star yesterday.

And yes, she can sing! Ish. Here for the strong of stomach is her losing 2005 bid for Eurovision glory. (Stick with the preamble for a teasing snatch of Der Hölle Rache too):

T1ts, batons, Scandinavians

T1ts out at Covent Garden
The Royal Opera House is going to stage an opera based on the life of Anna Nicole Smith. Early versions of the story implied Richard Thomas, composer of the musical Jerry Springer:The Opera, was scoring it, but it turns out he's just writing the libretto; the music will be handled by the fully house-trained Mark-Anthony Turnage. So no dumb 'dumbing down' comments on that account.

But where will they find a credibly-bewbed soprano to fill Anna Nicole's mighty cups?

Beat that Tony Pappano
When the Pittsburgh Opera's Radames lost his voice in the last act of Aida, conductor Antony Walker stepped in and sang the role from the pit while he waved his baton. "I had a lovely duet with the sopranos," said Mr. Walker. "A conductor and a singer often communicate."

It's not open till the fat bloke sings
What's getting Norwegians more heated than a Dale sweater? Amongst the performers at the 12 April opening of Oslo's brand new opera house will be the Ole Ivars dance band, whose best known song apparently translates as "oh how fat you've become".