From Inconvenient Truth to Inconvenient Opera
Sooo… An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s much acclaimed slide-show turned documentary about global warming is to become an opera. Milan’s La Scala opera house announced this week that they had commissioned Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli to write an opera which will debut in Milan in 2011. Battistelli’s previous opera’s have been inspired by Shakespeare, Jules Verne, Mary Shelley and Pasolini (poet), but this will be his first attempt at creating an opera from something unglamorously based in science.
Of course, Battistelli work was made slightly easier last year when the the British courts ruled that although An Inconvenient Truth was largely based on scientific fact, but there were 11 significant errors and that these errors were made in “the context of alarmism and exaggeration.” Since opera’s are about tragedy and horrific things happening to people, the 11 significant errors makes it easier for Battistelli to identify tragic things upon wish to write dramatic music.
Thus the transformation of Al Gore’s legacy is nearly complete – from an inconvenient truth to an inconvenient fiction. Of all the American politicians, only Gore’s work and maybe even bits of his life, are about to be immortalised as an opera. His name will live on long after the current American politicians are nothing more than a footnote in history books. There is even a chance here for the opera to linger into the future until it is nothing more than a myth recited by humans huddling around fire places on Pluto or Triton…
But pulling ourselves back to the present, here at The Dappled Planet, we are trying to work out which is the greater tragedy – that such a dry, depressing and scientific subject such as Al Gore , er… oops, global warming, could be turned into an opera or the people in 2011 who will pay to actually watch the opera.
