Anna Nicole: A new type of culture

Michael Betteridge

“A musically rich, audacious and inexplicably poignant work” The New York Times

“It’s a musical-theatre hybrid, so simplistic in its construction and vocal scoring, so cheap in its pseudo-sexual thrills and narcotic spills, that it wastes an opera house’s resources.” Financial Times

Like it or loathe it Turnage’s Anna Nicole has caused quite a stir at Covent Garden over the last month.  Any opera group or music organisation is always taking a risk throwing often extortionate amounts of money at lavish productions and even more so at a ‘contemporary’ piece.  Initially I was going to avoid commenting on the opera mainly due to the abundance of reviews, thoughts, anecdotes, etc found on blogs, Twitter, in the press and even on the BBC news at Ten, yet after this recent article by Mark Prescott (www.guardian.co.uk/music/theatreblog/2011/mar/01/opera-reviews-music-critics?cat=music&type=article) I thought I would do my take on the now infamous (in more ways than one) Anna Nicole.

Is music the most important thing in opera?  Opera is the ultimate art form in many respects as it draws - or can draw on - the wonders of dance, music, theatre, text, visual art and much more.  Many would argue the plot and libretto make an opera, some may say the characters, but where would we be without the fantastic and emotional outpouring that music can provide?  Whether you believe music has emotional depth or not composers have used the wonders of the human voice to portray human emotional at its most raw and intimate.

Of course that’s not necessarily the point of opera at all, but it is one, regardless of one’s musical education, that anyone can relate to.  And I bring this up for several reasons.  Firstly Anna Nicole was a very contemporary figure.  Not just in terms of her recent life and death, but how she was a prime of example of celebrity culture, and how she entirely succumbed to it.  Other opera portraying contemporary figures (Nixon in China for example) fail in their attempt to create human characters, whether it was the creative team’s purpose or not.  By choosing a vulnerable individual who we as a society were subjected to her every movement, even during her downfall, we identify characteristics of her ego and drive that we may resent in ourselves.  Warhol’s “15 minutes of fame” never seemed so true.  Who won the X-Factor two years ago?  Also imagine if the subject of the opera was the late Princess Diana?  We still emotionally engage with her story and personality rather than just her circumstance.  When we depict politicians or historical figures we subject them to satire to humanize them; the culture of celebrity is so shallow there is nothing to satirize.

To deal with such a larger-than-life character (definitely in more ways than one!) must be tricky, even if the operatic treatment would highlight her eccentricities – how do a creative team prevent creating a two-dimensional bimbo?  One critic (twitter or elsewhere) suggested that Turnage’s music was subservient to the libretto.  There is a fine line between the music serving the text well and bowing down to it.  On occasion, unfortunately, I felt the latter was true, but only very rarely.  Thomas’ text, despite attempting to shock us (can you shock a modern audience?), was exceptionally refined compared to his Jerry Springer: The Opera.  The text was beautifully written: abrasive, lyrical, compact, emotional and powerful in all the right places.  Turnage’s melodies served them well, though sometimes too well: the contours and shape of phrases, especially halfway through the first act, didn’t travel and move as I felt they wanted to.  This was rectified in the second act, and maybe Turnage saved his most lyrical, beautiful moments for the more touching scenes. 

Despite this complaint Turnage’s score was nothing less than fantastic.  Many have noted references to Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress and a mutated version of Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, but I heard much more than this.  There were moments that screamed Bernstein’s West Side Story; the shapes of the melodies were sometimes Sondheim, sometimes Stravinsky.  Jazz was evident a lot especially the broad big band sound enhanced by virtuosic writing for the kit, brass and horns.  Whether these moments were pastiche or reference only a careful examination of the score (and a good knowledge of 20^th century American music) could say, but what intrigued me the most was Turnage’s use of these moments.  Either these sections were happily mocking our protagonist and her situation, or were supporting her and provided an emotional outpouring for the characters on stage in an idiom that was familiar to said characters.  For the former Turnage would use irregular and disruptive time signatures often with dissonant harmonies and confused cross melodies; for the latter the music (pastiche or reference) would feature clearer harmonies with a steadier pulse.  The characters in Anna Nicole are dumb – they cannot understand the complexities that the music throws at them.  They can only speak the language of emotion when an idiom that is safe and familiar appears.  The only character to go against the grain is Anna’s mother who eventually becomes our narrator and Greek chorus (the chorus themselves by the end of the opera mostly become mute, faceless television cameras scrabbling at the left over rubbish).  Her aria towards the end of Act II is exceptionally heartfelt and one that I hope becomes a staple of the contemporary repertoire in years to come. 

What perhaps impressed me the most was the pace and construction of the work.  Unfortunately some operas from Monteverdi to John Adams are not structured in a way that has dramatic thrust and impetus.  Initially the stage and scene is set as a reality television show with the chorus and audience pawing and clambering their way into Anna’s life.  Throughout the work the focus is slowly mutated so we are no longer a passive audience watching through the glass of a television screen, but seeing a desperate, private life as a fly on the wall.  Sadly Anna’s life was never private, but we, as an audience, feel like we are invading her life.  Yet it is impossible to say if our Anna is even aware of her very existence due to the multitude of drugs she is on – she is a sad and disgusting character, and yet we still watch and will her on to feed our celebrity fix ignoring those flaws that we see within ourselves.

Opera is designed to be a spectacle.  It is designed to draw in the masses.  It is supposed to be satirical and witty, yet highly entertaining.  Anna Nicole despite its few flaws definitely fulfils these requirements.  The text is painfully contemporary and relevant; the music, even if alien to some, embraces many familiar styles.  Celebrity culture, for many, is the fuel of our every day lives.  Anna Nicole is both a stark warning and a perceptive and human take on an individual who succumbed to the failings of our fast-food, fast-living society.