An opera about Anna Nicole Smith – the American sex symbol, Playboy Playmate, hapless model, laughable actress and fortune-hunting wife of a billionaire 62 years her senior? Commissioned by, no less, the Royal Opera at Covent Garden? When the plans were announced it sounded like a dubious idea, a tawdry way for a major opera house to look hip.
“Anna Nicole,” the opera by the British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and the British librettist Richard Thomas, finally had its premiere here at the Royal Opera on Thursday night before a sold-out house with standees everywhere. And it proved a weirdly inspired work, an engrossing, outrageous, entertaining and, ultimately, deeply moving new opera. This was an improbable triumph for Covent Garden.
