Anna Nicole Smith Opera

On February 17, London’s Royal Opera House opens one of its riskiest projects yet: “Anna Nicole.” The opera house will run six shows, all of which are already sold out. The company imposed a minimum age of 16, and the website described the new work “a celebrity story of our times that includes extreme language, drug abuse, and sexual content.”

There have been operas with heroines who led far-from-exemplary lives, but “[t]he main difference with Smith is that she is not fictional, died only four years ago and a court battle involving claims to part of the fortune left behind by her late husband have rumbled on in U.S. courts.”

Mike Collett-White, Anna Nicole Smith to Crash Genteel World of Opera, Yahoo! News, Feb. 15, 2011.

Special thanks to David S. Luber (Attorney at law, Florida Probate Attorney Wills and Estates Law Firm) and Adam J. Hirsch (William & Catherine VanDercreek Professor, Florida State University College of Law) for bringing this to my attention.