Royal Opera House, London
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.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/feb/18/anna-nicole-review
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