An opera based on the life of Anna Nicole Smith opened at The Royal Opera House last night. It tells the story of the life of the Playboy Playmate who died of an overdose at the age of 39. Could it work? Librettist and composer Stuart Wood went to find out....

This week has seen a frightfully well-behaved bunch of pop stars at The Brits and the terribly conservative Kings Speech lauded, quite rightfully, at the Baftas. So where is cultural anarchy in the UK? At the Royal Opera House, of course!

Last night’s world premiere of Anna Nicole, commissioned by the ROH was an orgy of creative talent of the highest calibre, given a massive budget and let loose on material rich with pop iconography of mythic proportions. Anna Nicole’s story was made for opera and this production is a beacon of proof that state funded arts, in the right hands, are essential for the cultural health of the nation.

This was a night when I felt proud to be a Brit.  Eva-Maria Westbroek’s Anna emerges on a Big Brother type golden chair like Venus emerging from the waves; “I want to blow you all”, she sings. This is the show for an audience who didn’t realise how much they needed their spirits lifting until they soared. Westbroek is physically Anna, in her walk, in her child-like wonder and naïve pursuit of the American dream and her pain. She is onstage the whole time and we never once laugh at her. We stick with her despite the ridiculousness of her journey; her falling in love in Jim’s Krispy Fried Chicken, her time at Walmart, her pole-dance performance, boob-job and blow job on 89 year old husband to be, because what we witness is truth. Her crisp soprano is warm with a southern twang, something I have certainly never heard before, bringing sympathy to this twisted Cinderella.

What would Anna Nicole have made of it? Oh, she would definitely have approved. It was only four years ago that she died as a result of an overdose of prescription drugs aged 39. Around this time the Royal Opera approached Mark Anthony Turnage to write and opera with a contemporary subject. Writer, Richard Thomas, a fine composer in his own right and largely responsible for Jerry Springer, The Opera, had the spark of an idea for the Anna Nicole story at the same time as Turnage had his. The success of the work is perhaps because of this total ownership of both the composer and librettist. This wasn’t a gig or a commission for either of them but the birth of a child. The tightness of the book, the lyric and the score feels like it was born of one great mind and this is then consistent throughout the production; the set, the lighting and costumes: the cohesion of the work is masterful.

With a chorus of 80, the scale of the drama is lifted high from the start. The tension in the music is always present and only released by the hilarity of Thomas’ rhymes, scansion and rudeness. Even when Turnage creates his own loungey Vegas muzak, there is something painful going on in the woodwinds. The music is never pastiche, but also never coldly modern. He's always working to serve the lyric and the drama rather than show us who the composer is. The music is coloured to match the time and place, but he also opens the cavernous spaces of the protagonist’s heart. Turnage's musical language matches Thomas’ super modern words; musical motifs which dramatise the four syllables of ‘An-na Nic-ole’ giving her the television theme tune and then the diabolical Wagnerian horns when she achieves slices of her American Dream.

I'm more familiar with Thomas’ work than Turnage, (he spent a few days prepping his score for Cattle-Call for Phoenix dance at my studio back in 2008) and there were moments in Anna Nicole where it was apparent that the generosity of Turnage allowed Thomas to play with the dots. Hearing this score with the technically brilliant ROH Orchestra in the hands of Tony Pappano who manages to stretch the elasticity of emotion from low-fi jazzy drum kit to huge choral chants is a feast for the ears and hopefully, a recording is scheduled.

The lighting design by Mimi Jordan Sherin and D.M. Wood reminded us that we were watching high art. A pink spotlight shone only Anna and intensified with her hunger. An intense flash of bright white light shifted a scene in an instant like a dangerous, giant paparazzi flash bulb. Set designer, Miriam Buether, who won the Hospital Club Creative Award for theatre in 2008, created wonderful set pieces in front of a corrugated backdrop always betraying Anna's start in life. Her ‘side-show window’ into Anna’s family home, is the same window that is the fried chicken joint and pole dancing club and shop window full of plastic Disney Bambi characters. Perhaps the most bizarre visuial momentwas when Anna is a guest on the Larry King show and a live link up to her dogs reveal huge nodding plastic creatures in the side show.

Susan Bickley plays the Mother, and her list song of which included ‘cum-bucket’ and ‘cunt-hungry beasting’ amongst her tirade against men was one of the evening’s highlights as was Dominic Rowntree’s teenage Daniel, son of Anna Nicole, whose departing list song is a litany of prescription drugs. The youthful audience rose with thunderous applause and Tweeted like crazy sending #AnnaNicole into the top 5 trending topics. The reviews were out before the curtain came down and new connections were being forged through the shared conversation in the Tweet-sphere.

As she zips herself into her body bag, like all tragic operatic heroines there is purity in her death and guilt in our pleasure of being amused at it, she signs out; “I want to blow you all...a kiss.”

The hottest ticket in town was really not that difficult to come by. The Royal Opera House, or the Garden to those in the know, has 67 tickets available on the day of a performance from 10am, for priced between £20-£30, one ticket per person. I was number 13 in the queue at 8.45am and unscrewing the cap of my thermos a very well to do lady asked me if I would like 2 standingtickets with excellent sight lines for £4 each! I packed away my flask and phoned a friend.

Check the link for details. http://www.roh.org.uk/visit/boxoffice.aspx

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