The queen of tabloid TV arrived at BAM Tuesday night in “Anna Nicole,” an opera brimming with wit and good taste.
In other words, they got Anna Nicole all wrong.
For this BAM/New York City Opera collaboration, composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and librettist Richard Thomas take a surrealistic romp through the life and career of the late glamazon Anna Nicole Smith.
They succeed best in the fizzy first act, in which Anna Nicole merrily climbs the ladder of success, from fast-food waitress to lap dancer to bride of an 80-year-old billionaire. Turnage shows a gift for musical farce with raunchy, jazzy numbers for Anna Nicole’s fellow strippers and the plastic surgeon who fits her with her first pair of implants.
As our heroine descends into obesity and substance abuse, the second act turns into a sentimental downer, satire slumping into schmaltz.
Musically and dramatically, this Anna Nicole is just too nice. What’s missing is the passive-aggressive monster diva we knew from her reality show.
Soprano Sarah Joy Miller simply isn’t trashy enough. Petite and pretty — she’s a ringer for Jane Krakowski — she seems too smart and classy to make a believable Anna Nicole.
Whether tricked out with stripper heels or stuffed into an (unconvincing) fat suit, Miller retained her pert dignity. Even with a body mike, her silvery lyric soprano sounded diffuse and unassertive.
The real star of this show was Susan Bickley as Virgie, Anna Nicole’s mother. She lurked on the sidelines, commenting bitterly on the action until the last scene, when she took center stage to lament her daughter’s death in a wide-ranging, vibrant mezzo.
In those few minutes, “Anna Nicole” seemed like a real opera, in which the singing conveyed larger-than-life emotion. Bickley’s vocal grandeur stood out strongly among an otherwise mostly bland cast.
There were exceptions, notably Robert Brubaker as J. Howard Marshall II, Anna Nicole’s sugar daddy and hubby. His piercing tenor suggested the old man’s granite determination to live life to the fullest — right up to the moment he collapsed and was shoved into a body bag.
Another tenor, Richard Troxell, camped it up as the sinister plastic surgeon Dr. Yes, his crisp voice expertly tossing off one of Thomas’ funnier one-liners: “This is my mantra, this is my chant: fight time and nature with a silicone implant!”
Another standout was Broadway belter Christina Sajous as exotic dancer Blossom, who briefly electrified the first act with an aria schooling Anna Nicole on the basics of lap dancing.
The villain of the piece, Anna Nicole’s lawyer Howard K. Stern, had nothing interesting to sing — a shame, because baritone Rod Gilfry was in fine, firm voice.
BAM and NYCO gave this 2011 opera the royal treatment, with a cast of 50-plus and a 60-piece orchestra. Richard Jones’ production sent a chorus of maniacally grinning TV reporters line-dancing across a hot-pink set accessorized with a 30-foot-wide mattress and a mirror ball.
As Anna Nicole’s life crumbles, her glittering entourage of pole dancers, bodybuilders and busty nurses gradually gives way to an army of dancing TV cameras that hounds her last, drug-addled moments.
Speaking of “last moments”: NYCO is scrambling to raise $7 million by the end of the month to prevent canceling the rest of the season — or closing down forever.
Will “The People’s Opera” end up like Anna Nicole? Stay tuned.