Huh?!?

What's just about the last thing you think about when you think opera? What is so far removed from opera that it's inconceivable to think about them in the same sentence? Umm. . . crazy communist dictators? No, they already did that one. Ummm. . . the Royal Navy? No, got tickets to that one already. How 'bout. . .Al Gore? No, it has nothing to do with 2000 or Florida, which would be perhaps vaguely entertaining. Just imagine the possibilities. A plaintive aria and chorus of retired Manhattannites who have just discovered they have tragically voted for Pat Buchannan. A stirring end-of-act chorus of protesters, vote-counters, commentators, with Bush and Gore soaring over it all (I suppose Bush would have to be the tenor). The Supreme Court could have a complex, dramatic nontet (maybe a ballet thrown in?) with two opposing themes that somehow fit discordantly together. Definitely potential. Anyone interested?

But no. It's ummm. . . . global warming? Yeah. Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli has been working on an opera based on. . . um. . . An Inconvenient Truth. . . yeah. . . for La Scala in 2011. I tried to find some information on this guy, but it's pretty thin. I've found adjectives like "post-modern", and "experimental", and the opera in question will be done in a "multi-media" format. None of which inspires confidence. His choice of subjects is quite interesting though. His works include an opera about a drunk who's in charge of maintaining Lennin's preserved body, Richard III (in English with a Flemish opera company) and something about Hector and Achilles, although I haven't been able to find much about that at all.

The only way in which I see this working is probably not the way he's going to do it, given the experimental, atonal, multi-media thing. It could maybe be neat if they went totally Pagan, with a rockin' contralto Gaia singing like Fricka. . . maybe. But somehow I don't think that's the tack there're going to take.