Nicole Scherzinger Does GQ India

I’ve always wondered what the hell was the big deal about Nicole Scherzinger. I mean, she used to be the lead singer for the damn Pussycat Dolls. Then she went on Dancing with the Stars.

Could a chick be any more pathetic?

Well, Nicole’s photoshoot for GQ India has shown me the errors in my thinking.

This chick is HOT. Who knew she was hiding TITS and ASS like that? Not I. Sure as hell Not I.

I say get this  chick a role in a movie. One that requires nudity. Or a Cinemax late night show would work just as well.

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Anna Nicole Smith opera wows critics in London (AFP)

LONDON (AFP) – An opera on the tragic life of former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith premiered at London's prestigious Royal Opera House and was applauded by critics.

"Anna Nicole" charts the tumultuous life and death of the former glamour model who first hit the world's headlines in 1994 when she married 89-year-old oil tycoon J Howard Marshall.

"It?s often very funny, but it?s not just a crude farce with a downbeat ending," the Telegraph's Rupert Christiansen said.

"It is underpinned by genuine compassion for Anna Nicole and genuine scorn for the forces that mould, and then destroy her.

Marshall died in 1995, sparking a long and acrimonious battle over the multi-millionaire's fortune. The Texas born stripper died of a drug overdose in 2007 aged 39.

Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek was lauded by Christiansen for playing the lead role "with inexhaustible energy...which never strikes a false note of sentimentality."

Jessica Duchen, the Independent's reviewer, was equally enthusiastic after witnessing "the most hotly anticipated night in contemporary opera in years."

"It's a tremendous show, fast-paced, spare and concentrated," Duchen wrote. "She's not only a tragic heroine: she the rise and fall of western excess itself.

"Westbroek is a startlingly innocent Anna, caught in demoniac forces...beyond her control," she added.

The central London venue is one of the most famous opera houses in the world, but is better known for showcasing the talents of Verdi and Mozart rather than topless models.

The opera is the creation of British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and lyricist Richard Thomas, who upset Christian groups in 2003 with his contribution to production "Jerry Springer: The Opera."

"She wasn't just this dumb blonde," Turnage told CNN. "Her life touches on so many things, it seemed to encapsulate the 21st century."

The opera lingers on the death of Smith's son, Daniel, who died of a suspected drug overdose in 2006 while visiting his mother and newly-born half-sister in a Bahamas hospital.

"It's a very universal story," Thomas told CNN. "I wanted to tell a story about a single mom. She makes some good choices. She makes some bad choices. Then she runs out of choices.

"It is a rags-to-riches story and a cautionary tale all chucked into a blender and whooshed up with three bags of sugar and two bottles of tequila and poured over a two-hour time frame," Thomas added.

Elaine Padmore, director of opera at the Royal Opera House, called Smith?s story "an opera for our times."

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Anna Nicole Smith: big in life, now big in opera (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) – The tabloid life of Playboy centerfold Anna Nicole Smith, who bought big breasts, married an oil billionaire and gave birth on TV, has made it to the opera stage in London in a production true to operatic tradition.

Like her sexy operatic sisters Salome, Lulu and Manon, the Texan babe with the silicone monsters who becomes addicted to pain killers for consequent back troubles, dies just before the final curtain, of a drug overdose at age 39.

That's when the cheering of the sold-out opening night audience erupted for the Royal Opera House production of a two-hour opera by librettist Richard Thomas, of "Jerry Springer: The Opera" fame, and British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage.

The staging included a tour-de-force performance by Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek as Anna, wearing prosthetic breasts most of the time, and who is zipped up in a body bag as the lights go out.

"The way we look at it is Anna in this opera is a fabulous eccentric who fell on bad times," Thomas told Reuters Television before the Thursday night premiere of the first of six performances.

The run has been sold out for weeks and, given the risque material, has been the talk of the London music scene and even Britain's tabloids, which normally eschew opera.

The papers were particularly exercised about the prospect of fellatio being performed onstage as Anna attempts to wheedle a ranch from her octogenarian billionaire "paw paw," J. Howard Marshall, who died a little more than a year after they married.

A crowd that gathers blocks out all view while the act supposedly is performed, leaving everything to the imagination.

QUITE AN EYEFUL

The audience, however, got quite an eye and earful for its money. The tone was set with a special cerise-colored curtain topped with a gaudy cameo of Anna Nicole above the proscenium.

The production included an utterly believable re-creation of a lap-dancing club set in Smith's native Texas and a riotous, cocaine-fueled onstage party that featured a guest appearance by Led Zeppelin bass guitarist John Paul Jones, a long-time friend of the composer.

Jones turning up as part of a jazz trio gives only a small clue to the depth and breadth of Turnage's score for the 80-piece ROH orchestra, under the baton of conductor Antonio Pappano.

Turnage, 50 and writing his third opera, pulled from a huge range of styles, including a banjo-tinged tune reminiscent of Smith's native American south.

There also was a witty ensemble for the furious billionaire Marshall's offspring from previous marriages who inform Anna in no uncertain terms she's not getting a dime of his money to a reworking of Sly and the Family Stone's "We Are Family."

"Some people say, 'Why an opera?' and actually she's very much an opera figure," Turnage said.

"It needs that big treatment...as soon as I started working on this I felt this, I could see her singing, Anna Nicole singing. That was very important to me, that I could musicalise her."

The Royal Opera has been at pains to underscore that despite strong parallels to Smith's life, the production is not, as the company's press spokeswoman Ann Richards put it, a "bio-op."

This stance may in part be designed to ward off spillover from the endless legal battle that arose from Smith's efforts to claim part of Marshall's estate, and litigation initiated by the attorney Howard Stern, who was her partner at the end.

Larry Birkhead, the father of Smith's surviving child Dannielynn, told Reuters on Thursday her estate was considering legal options against the makers of the opera.

Thomas said there was "no intention to write a sort of defamatory-prone script," while Turnage said he'd gone out of his way to give Stern, sung with immense finesse by Canadian baritone Gerald Finley, "beautiful music."

The opera's ultimate message, though, is delivered by the woman who wanted to be Marilyn Monroe and instead wound up an overweight addict and laughing-stock of reality television.

"I want to blow you all, blow you all, a kiss," Anna sings near the opera's opening, and again at its tragic conclusion.

(Additional reporting by Nickie Omer; Editing by Matthew Jones)

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Anna Nicole, the opera: She aims to sleaze (AP)

By MIKE SILVERMAN, For The Associated Press Mike Silverman, For The Associated Press – Fri Feb 18, 8:23 am ET

LONDON – Why write an opera about the sordid life and death of Anna Nicole Smith? That question doubtless leaped to the minds of many when they heard the Royal Opera had commissioned such a work.

And sad to say, despite the expenditure of considerable talent and money — and a splendid performance by Eva-Maria Westbroek in the title role — the question remains unanswered following the world premiere of "Anna Nicole" at Covent Garden on Thursday night.

For anyone who may have forgotten, Smith was a single mother from small-town Texas who, thanks to breast enhancement surgery, became a Playboy celebrity and married an oil tycoon 63 years her senior. Her claim on his fortune was disputed by his heirs, and in 2007 — after giving birth (on pay-per-view TV) and seeing her 20-year-old son die of an overdose in her hospital room — she herself, grossly overweight, died of a drug overdose at age 39.

To be sure, Smith's willingness to go to any lengths to lift herself out of poverty and her lifelong obsession with publicity have a lurid quality that seems almost mythic. That's apparently what attracted librettist Richard Thomas and composer Mark-Anthony Turnage when they were looking for a subject for an opera.

But it's not enough to put the spectacle of her life on stage in a chronological narrative, dressed up with satiric jabs at obvious targets and occasional attempts to indict society at large for enabling Anna's career. We may feel pity for her, along with disgust, but those are not responses that redeem the tawdry spectacle of her life. In this retelling of her story, it's hard to empathize with her, much less imagine her as a figure of tragedy.

Thomas has written a sometimes-clever, sometimes-sophomoric libretto very much in the vein of his popular hit, "Jerry Springer: The Opera."

A typical sample is Anna's introductory line: "I want to blow you all — a kiss." (These are also her final words before being zipped into a body bag at the end.)

In a more serious, but not necessarily more persuasive vein, Thomas has Anna exclaim near the end: "Oh, America, you dirty whore. I gave you everything but you wanted more.

Turnage, a respected composer of two previous operas, has set Thomas's words to a tuneful, percussive score that is highly accessible on first hearing. His orchestration includes a role for jazz trio — a bass guitar, guitar and drums — that helps blur the lines between "serious" music and a more popular sound. Antonio Pappano, the Royal Opera's music director, conducts with seeming mastery.

There are some striking lyrical moments, as when Anna sings an aria of delight after receiving her new breasts (before the resulting back pain has led to her painkiller addiction.) And there's a lovely ensemble to conclude Act 1 as Anna and her billionaire husband, J. Howard Marshall II, stand atop a wedding cake while distorted strains of Mendelssohn play and various characters express their thoughts.

There's also a gorgeous, melancholy interlude midway through Act 2, marking the passage of 10 years as a curtain covered with double cheeseburgers shows Anna's figure giving way to the obesity of later years.

Westbroek, a Dutch soprano much admired in the standard repertory of Wagner, Verdi and Puccini, throws herself into the title role with all of her considerable assets. On stage for virtually the entire two-hour length of the opera, Westbroek sings with luminous tone and creates a plausible sex symbol with her blond hair and glamorous figure (before she has to put on a fat suit for the later scenes). There's also a disarming sincerity and eagerness to please about her that make the character more appealing than she might otherwise be.

Among the supporting cast, mezzo-soprano Susan Bickley makes a sympathetic figure as Anna's loyal but critical mother, Virgie ("My flesh, my blood, my embarrassment," she sings at one point). Tenor Alan Oke as Marshall makes a splendid entrance flying in from the wings in an over-sized armchair and revels with unabashed glee at buying Anna's sexual favors.

As Anna's surgeon, Doctor Yes, tenor Andrew Rees has fun with his aria describing the differences in cup sizes ("A is small, no use at all ... ." Dominic Rowntree, as Anna's grown-up son, Daniel, doesn't get to sing until after he's dead. Then he has a brief aria, the words of which consist of a list of all the drugs found in his system — Valium, Prozac and about 20 others.

The opera's most problematic character is Anna's lawyer-turned-boyfriend, Howard K. Stern. Portrayed by baritone Gerald Finley, he makes brief appearances in Act 1 but without much purpose.

Even in Act 2, the part seems underwritten — as if the creators couldn't quite decide whether to make him more villain or sorrowful witness to Anna's demise.

Director Richard Jones has given the work a lively, fast-moving production, especially in the first and vastly more entertaining half, which traces Anna's rise in jaunty, energetic fashion.

Though the Royal Opera warned of "extreme language, drug abuse and sexual content," there's little on stage to shock, some rough language aside. Even the sex act to which Anna's opening lines teasingly refer takes place with the chorus tactfully concealing her and Marshall from view.

There are five more performances through March 4, all of them sold out.

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Online: http://www.roh.org.uk/

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