An Inconvenient...Opera?
Did you like Al Gore's environmental docu-movie, An Inconvenient Truth? Would you like to see it as an opera?
Production is underway in Milan for an operatic version of the film, which relates alarming environmental information regarding humanity's impact on the health of the planet, intercut with relevant biographical pieces from Gore's own life.
The opera adaptation will bring some changes, of course, focusing more on the story unfolding through a set of characters rather than through a central narrator, as in the film. Gore and the movie's green message will still figure prominently, however.
George Hall at The Guardian (UK) points out that, "It's far from new for opera to take contemporary or political themes as its subject matter." Hall gives composer John Adams as a rich example of the meld between current events and classical opera. Adams himself has written six operas since the late 1980's, adapting such events as Richard Nixon's visit to China, the hijacking of passenger liner Achille Lauro by the Palestine Liberation Front in 1985, the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake, and more.
The project is interpreted by Italo composer Giorgio Battistelli, a former artistic chief of the Arena in Verona. "Artists", Battistelli explained to Variety, "make you see things differently, make you see things in a new light. When we see a painting by Francis Bacon or a film of Sydney Pollack, we get a very precise idea of the problems of our century."
The opera is currently scheduled for debut at Scala in Milan in 2011, and is timed to coincide with Italy's national celebration of the 150th anniversary of its 1861 unification.
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