Turnage: Anna Nicole Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

Turnage: Anna Nicole Blu-ray Movie Review

Larger than life.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 8, 2011

Opera purists may bitterly decry the seemingly fairly recent ascension of pop cultural subjects to the ranks of this ostensibly grandest of all the performing arts, but think about it for just a moment. Certainly Greek myths were a certain kind of “pop culture” back in the day of Monteverdi’s early efforts in the genre, and there are elements of then- contemporary society in everything from Carmen to Lady Macbeth of Mtensk. So it should perhaps be not so surprising that contemporary artisans have sought to exploit the lives of tabloid fodder like Jerry Springer, Tonya Harding and, now, Anna Nicole Smith. It’s absolutely fair to wonder whether these craftspeople have their eye as much on lucre as they do on actual Art, for who can deny the immediate box office appeal of something seeking to musicalize an infamous talk show host or a disgraced Olympic athlete? There’s an element of “train wreck-it is” about pieces like this, for audiences are probably drawn as much by the spectacle of watching the often unbelievable shenanigans of those they’ve actually seen or read about as they are by any illusions that they’re about to experience some lasting masterpiece. Composer Mark-Anthony Turnage is no stranger to either “pop culture” of yore, as his first piece, Greek, trod the same Olympic grounds of Monteverdi’s earliest pieces, and Turnage’s second piece was an adaptation of Sean O’Casey Silver Tassie. Here, working with Jerry Springer: The Opera’s librettist Richard Thomas, Turnage fashions a big, bright, lurid and garish piece that is perfectly in tune with its titular character. Told as a sort of distaff version of A Rake’s Progress, Anna Nicole doesn’t offer much if any salvation for its (anti-?)heroine, or indeed much if any catharsis for the audience. This is a tawdry circus, and as such it’s inerrantly entertaining, often scabrously funny, but it’s also sordid and unseemly. Needless to say, it was a box office triumph when the staid and stodgy Royal Opera House slummed a little bit and premiered the piece to a perhaps surprisingly uniform critical appreciation, if not outright raving acclaim.

Richard Thomas (isn’t it just slightly funny he shares a name with our iconic John-Boy Walton actor?) treats Anna Nicole as the unwitting victim of both her naïvete as well as her grasping attempts to hold on to what she perceives as The American Dream. Thomas and Turnage cast the ensemble as a group of reporters, and they literally follow Anna (Eva-Maria Westbroek) around for the entirely of the opera. This voyeuristic quality is part and parcel of what makes Anna Nicole a spectacle, in the truest sense of the word: it’s meant, like Anna Nicole herself, to be watched. Big and boisterous, garish and lurid, Anna Nicole may not be grand opera in the traditional sense, but it’s grand fun almost all of the time.

Director Richard Jones invests the piece with a slapdash glamour that seems perfectly in tune with Anna Nicole’s own trailer trash charms. He even has some members of the ensemble dance around with large cameras on their heads, dancers who zoom into Anna Nicole like the prying lenses of the paparazzi. The opera is intentionally episodic, kind of lurching from moment to moment, and as such there’s little real drama or human feeling in the piece, which may be its largest drawback in ever attaining a position in world repertoire. When people have long forgotten Anna Nicole Smith—and heaven knows, that day is coming, sooner or later—will they have enough context to care about the life- sized cartoon prancing around on the Royal Opera House stage?

Turnage’s score is as brash as its subject matter. It’s big, brassy and often densely packed with choral declamations. Anna gets a couple of nice arias (including a lovely finale), but this is not a score packed to the gills with incessant lyricism. However, when one considers the libretto and what Turnage had to work with, his stylistic choices become at least a bit more understandable. Did Puccini or Verdi ever have to set dialogue which included such priceless words as “shithole, ass-wipe, crazy slut,” or any number of formulations of the F-bomb? We can only hope the Queen was not in attendance for this performance.

One of the funnier things about this Blu-ray is the disclaimer presented before the opera even begins: Although this work is based on a true story, it is an Opera, and contains many fictional elements, such as imaginary events and dialogue. It is not intended to an accurate factual depiction of any person, product or service. Is it pure unintentional irony that Anna Nicole is unwittingly referenced as a product or service? (To be fair, everything from Wal-Mart to Larry King comes in for ridicule in this piece). But that’s the point, really: Anna Nicole was a product. She was a product of her own inordinate dreams, and she became a product of a tabloid culture that only wanted pictures, never the real thing. Anna Nicole is often thought of as one of the first reality stars, someone who became famous for simply being famous. The real irony here is that she was one of the most unreal “stars” of this or any age. Reality had very little to do with Anna Nicole, and it has even less to do with Anna Nicole, and while that deprives this opera of any heartfelt emotion, it makes for one rollicking good time.

Turnage: Anna Nicole Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Anna Nicole is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Opus Arte with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. This is one of the most boisterously colorful operas in recent memory, as befits its subject, and this Blu-ray pops with some very, very vivid hues. Fine detail reveals a lot of great elements in the costumes, though it also makes apparent the appliance that Westbroek dons to approximate Smith's "enhanced" bosom. The stage is often bathed in lurid tones of green, red and purple, and despite this garish scheme, very little detail is lost. The interlaced presentation does present some very small issues with combing artifacts in fast movement sequences, but overall this is an artifact free presentation. Black levels are generally solid, though shadow detail is often on the murky side due to the lighting schemes.

Turnage: Anna Nicole Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Anna Nicole is sung in English, presented via two lossless audio options, a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix and an LPCM 2.0 stereo fold down. Truth be told, there isn't a whale of a lot of difference between these two tracks due to Turnage's emphasis on massed choral singing. This is an often very dense score, full of blasts of brass clusters and close harmonies in the ensemble, and as such even the 5.1 track can sound very crowded (for want of a better term) at times. That said, this is a bristlingly effective score that is very well represented on both of the lossless audio options. Westbroek and the rest of the cast sound fanstastic, and Antonio Pappano leads the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House in a very energetic reading of Turnage's score. Fidelity is superb throughout the opera, and while dynamic range is somewhat limited due to the hyperbolic tendencies of the piece, audiophiles should be very well pleased with either of the audio options on this Blu-ray.

Turnage: Anna Nicole Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Production Insights (1080i; 8:25) is a fun, if too brief, look backstage at the opera, including how they dressed up the Royal Opera House to be a virtual shrine to Anna Nicole. Westbroek talks about how hard it was to sing in English with a Texan twang.
• Cast Gallery

Turnage: Anna Nicole Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It's far too early to state with any certainty how history will treat Anna Nicole. Like the woman herself, this opera may be a mere flash in the pan, a gaudy and enjoyable romp that has no substance. Be that as it may, it can't be denied that Anna Nicole is fun and often very funny. The opera does less well trying to tug at our heartstrings as Smith's tragic life comes to its close. After an evening of scabrous humor and parody, trying to eke out a little tear seems gratuitous at best. But with an intriguing production design and an appealingly brash score, Anna Nicole is entertaining as very few operas ever have been, and it is Recommended.