View From the Phlipside - Anna Nicole - the Opera

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside.

Pardon me while I try and retrieve part of my education from many years ago.  If I remember my History of the Theater class at Edinboro then Opera was created to be the ultimate form of theater.  The grandest and most challenging music, epic stories, fabulous scenery.  Everything was supposed to be at the ultimate pinnacle of possibility.  I'm not sure all of us would agree that they achieved the goal but that's pretty much what they were aiming at.

Today opera, like most forms of classical music, is struggling.  Several generations have been raised with no particular appreciation of the art.  And yes that would include me.  It's generally seen as an elitist endeavor with a decidedly older fan base.  And that's a problem.  It makes things tough financially because your fan base is dying off with very few new fans stepping up to the plate.

Why this sudden concern for an art form that I readily admit I don't particularly

like?  Three words.  Anna. Nicole. Smith.  I know, seems like a total non sequitur doesn't it?  But then that pretty much sums up Anna Nicole too.  Playboy Playmate, pole dancer, actress and buxom wife of an octogenarian billionaire.  A woman to whom the words subtle and understated were so much meaningless noise.

And the subject of her own opera. No less a theater than the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden in London has just closed a limited but sold out run of "Anna Nicole - the Opera".   The official line is that the theater was trying to "move the art form forward".  I think the reality is that they were desperate to attract an audience that wasn't past retirement age.  While the purists are caught between poo-poohing and outright apoplexy don't kid yourself, American opera companies are watching this story with great interest.  If the Royal Opera House gets away with it, meaning they don't lose too many subscribers, then you'll see more of this coming our way.

If the bottom line for opera is grandiosity then Anna Nicole is probably the perfect opera heroine.  She wouldn't be the first bad girl heroine of the form.  To be honest while the former reality show star was over the top I don't think she was really ever epic.  The reviews seem to indicate that it all fall short in the other categories as well.

Critics have used words like trashy, flamboyantly vulgar and fabulously entertaining about the opera.  Kind of reminds of the lady herself, doesn't it?

Call that the View From the Phlipside

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2011