
Not since the Marx Brothers’ immortal “A Night at the Opera” has there been such potential mirth to be gleaned from the operatic form. From Variety (where else?):
William Friedkin will direct the premiere of the opera “An Inconvenient Truth,” which will debut at La Scala in Milan on May 11, 2011.
J.D. McClatchy, the poet who composed the book for Ned Rorem’s “Our Town” and co-wrote “Grendel” with Julie Taymor, has been tapped as the librettist. Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli will write the score. Participant Media, which financed the docu based on Al Gore’s book, will be among the backers of the opera.
Battistelli began work on the opera a year ago. It will be presented as part of La Scala’s contribution to the celebrations of the 150th anni of Italy’s unification.
Milan and Gore first connected when the former vice president backed the city’s bid to host Expo 2015 on promises of turning green.
Forget Traviata or Turandot… it is the melodious strains of “An Inconvenient Truth” that will soon be global warming their way across the storied boards of La Scala. Please feel free to add your suggested lyrics below. But be warned - this is truly “Beyond Parody.”
UPDATE: Nessun Gore-ma? Too bad the maestro is dead. He could have played a great Al.





PJM Home




54 Comments
1. Terrye:Sometimes I get the feeling I am living in Bizzaro world.
Jul 9, 2008 - 4:04 am 2. Barry Dauphin:Maybe this explains why Al has been fattening up the last few years. Secret voice lessons?
Jul 9, 2008 - 4:17 am 3. D. Anghelone:I hear the car chase is lame.
Jul 9, 2008 - 5:38 am 4. Larry J:Next, they’ll make “An Inconvientent Truth - On Ice!”
Jul 9, 2008 - 5:51 am 5. Richard Nieporent:Just another reason to hate opera.
Jul 9, 2008 - 6:24 am 6. Lem:La model e mobile
Jul 9, 2008 - 7:19 am 7. srlucado:Qual methane al vento,
Mute glacier — e di pensiero.
Solaria un amabile,
Snowball chance viso,
In pollutants o in sea rise — e menzognero.
Polar bears!
What’s happening to the polar bears?
It’s no longer just a warming scare,
They’re swimming for their lives!
CO2!
We’ve got to lower CO2!
There’s no refuge that we can go to,
How soon before the end arrives?
Kyoto!
Why won’t they sign the Kyoto?
We can’t ignore it, no, oh no,
Greenhouse gas levels must dive!
———————
You must admit the world is warm,
And icebergs no more can form,
Soon the seas will start to storm,
We cannot let this be the norm!
With fossil fuels we’ve tempted fate,
An SUV’s an act of hate,
To save the world we cannot wait,
We must act now or it’s too late!
Only one man stands at the shore,
The True Believer to the core,
He’ll stop the seas from rising more,
So save us now, Mister Al Gore!
————-
(I could go on, but I’m making myself sick.)
Scott
Jul 9, 2008 - 7:22 am 8. Lem:The parody.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVOVRZWrkgQ
Jul 9, 2008 - 8:24 am 9. Paul:The real question: When will Fahrenheit 9/11 be made into a soaring aria?
Jul 9, 2008 - 9:34 am 10. ElMondo:The opera?? The opera???
Oh my God… the important issue of climate science has well and truly been trivialized by the people who are supposedly its biggest champions.
Jul 9, 2008 - 11:00 am 11. David Thomson:This opera will most assuredly lose money. It will be sold out for the first couple of performances only because of the mandatory attendance of “concerned citizens.” Soon thereafter, it will disappear off the face of the Earth. Anyone investing in such a project obviously could care less about potential earnings. They just want to make sure of remaining on the invitation lists of the affluent, politically correct elites.
Jul 9, 2008 - 11:12 am 12. Paul A. Gaddis:Ummm… How much carbon is this little shindig gonna kick up? At least they will be close to the Pope and I am sure indulgences have been paid in full.
Jul 9, 2008 - 11:22 am 13. Bubbalicious:You haven’t heard? Al Gore invented Opera.
Jul 9, 2008 - 11:28 am 14. Bird:Won’t the fat lady be belting out a little too much carbon dioxide?
Jul 9, 2008 - 11:41 am 15. Jim:Why does the song “Springtime for Hitler” come to mind as I read this?
Jul 9, 2008 - 11:41 am 16. Robbins Mitchell:I would think that anAL GOREtentive and his little book would be more suitable to The Grand Ole Opry than to Grand Opera
Jul 9, 2008 - 11:43 am 17. Hucbald:Polar bears, penguins and cute arctic foxes…
Caribou, reindeer, and furry musk oxes…
Every day fewer and fewer remain…
and these are a few of my favorite things!…
(Yes, I know the plural of ox is oxen, but I’m betting a climo-tard librettist wouldn’t, or would call it “poetic license” if it was pointed out).
Jul 9, 2008 - 11:44 am 18. clarice feldman:Are they putting up their own money to produce this?
Jul 9, 2008 - 11:53 am 19. miles:Vissi d’global, vissi d’warming
Jul 9, 2008 - 11:54 am 20. miles:And rewrite Tipper as Tosca.
Jul 9, 2008 - 11:55 am 21. Falstaff:“Next, they’ll make “An Inconvientent Truth - On Ice!”
That is the most brilliant thing I’ve read all week. There was a perfect two-beat before I got all of it. Thank you Larry J.
Jul 9, 2008 - 11:58 am 22. Greg Toombs:I want Al Gore and the rest of the global warmist alarmists to meet Sweeney Todd.
Now that’d be worth paying to see.
Jul 9, 2008 - 12:00 pm 23. Rob:And when will the Fat Al sing???
We live in interesting times!!
Jul 9, 2008 - 12:21 pm 24. Bubba Thudd:I’ll wait for the camp musical (a la “Reefer Madness”) in which Al Gore is devoured in the last scene by a Yeti as glaciers cover Manhattan.
Jul 9, 2008 - 12:24 pm 25. Bob_R:Which blog would make the best opera? I’m leaning toward The Daily Dish. Lots of emotional highs and lows.
Jul 9, 2008 - 12:25 pm 26. Jake:“Next, they’ll make “An Inconvientent Truth - On Ice!””
But to drive home their point, they will have to skate in inch deep water. ‘Caps melting and such.
Jul 9, 2008 - 12:32 pm 27. Larry:Why does Elmer Fudd singing “kill the wabbit” to the ride of the valkeries come to mind?
Jul 9, 2008 - 12:38 pm 28. Rich:If the fat lady farts, does that effect global warming? Or does she get a credit since she likely would have been farting anyway?????
Jul 9, 2008 - 12:39 pm 29. Thomas:This is a job for Mark Steyn.
“Beware the Jacchirac, my son!
The jaw-jaw with the slithy catch
Beware the mimsy Blix and shun
The Princely Bandar, natch.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2003/01/25/do2502.xml
Jul 9, 2008 - 12:40 pm 30. Larry:This will be Gotterdammurung - the twilight of the Gores.
Jul 9, 2008 - 12:40 pm 31. Roderick Reilly:“”"”"Won’t the fat lady be belting out a little too much carbon dioxide?”"”"”"
Al Gore is going to do the role of the fat lady, complete with horned helmet and brass brasiere.
Jul 9, 2008 - 12:53 pm 32. Hyperpotamus:Larry J - that was brilliant!
Jul 9, 2008 - 1:05 pm 33. Greyhawk:Too many notes.
Jul 9, 2008 - 1:10 pm 34. Clyde:He is the very model of a modern major Goracle.
Jul 9, 2008 - 1:18 pm 35. charger:I’d pay to see Algore’s head spin while he vomits pea soup.
If anyone can pull that off, Friedkin can.
Jul 9, 2008 - 1:24 pm 36. Robbins Mitchell:Actually what comes to mind for this is more along the lines of the opera that Dom DeLuise staged in “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’s Smarter Brother”….replete with some buffon singing ‘Why don’t we all driiiinkkk some very sexxxxxy kool aid’
Jul 9, 2008 - 1:38 pm 37. T Wendell:By the time this thing hits the stage, we will be in another ice age and gasoline will be $2.00 a gallon
And did I hear right that Disney is setting up global warming park with a dressed up Al Gore running around like Mickey Mouse?
Jul 9, 2008 - 2:01 pm 38. unrepentant:One could do worse than recycling “Save the Earth” from Godzilla versus The Smog Monster
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybzMSUXpvyg&feature=related
Jul 9, 2008 - 2:09 pm 39. charles austin:Act 1:
“Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a ice-slide,
No escape from reality…”
Act 2:
Jul 9, 2008 - 2:14 pm 40. KWF:“Arise storms! North winds blow! South winds blow!
Typhoons, hurricanes, earthquakes, smog! …”
So, since it is opera, is it “Jumping” or “Leaping” the shark?
Jul 9, 2008 - 2:39 pm 41. Kejda:Al Gore e un gasso pezzo di merda rimbambito
Jul 9, 2008 - 2:43 pm 42. The Fat Lady In The Horned Helmet:Roderick: “the fat lady, complete with horned helmet and brass brasiere.”
That’s no ordinary brass brassiere, honey. That’s a TitaniumTits ™ Victory Battle-Bra with patented Nose-Cone Technology, thank you very much. You want a mere battle bra, go to any old fantasy convention. You want to see the best in metal corsetry, you have to go to the opera!
Jul 9, 2008 - 3:30 pm 43. William:If Gore attends, it will be only because they are giving out free food.
Jul 9, 2008 - 4:33 pm 44. Papertiger:This song is the story of an outlaw living on the fringe of the planned Gore planet, as seen through the eyes of his nephew.
My uncle has a country place,
that no one knows about.
He says it used to be a farm
before the Motor Law.
And on Sundays, I elude the “Eyes”
and hop the turbine freight -
to far outside the wire
where my white-haired uncle waits.
Jump to the ground as the turbo slows to cross the borderline.
Run like the wind as excitement shivers up and down my spine.
Where down in his barn, my uncle preserved for me an old machine - for 50 odd years. To keep it as new has been his dearest dream.
I strip away the old debris
that hides the shining car.
A brilliant red Barchetta from a
better vanished time.
Fire up the willing engine,
responding with a roar!
Tires spitting gravel I commit
my weekly crime.
Wind in my hair, shifting and drifting.
– mechanical music,
– adrenalin surge…..
Well weathered leather, hot metal and oil, the scented country air.
Sunlight on chrome, the blur of the landscape, every nerve aware!
Suddenly ahead of me,
across the mountain side,
a gleaming alloy air car shoots towards
me two lanes wide.
I spin around with shrieking tires
to run the deadly race;
go screaming through the valley as
another joins the chase.
Ride like the wind, straining the limits of machine and man.
Laughing out loud with fear and hope, I’ve got a desperate plan.
At the one lane bridge I leave the giants stranded at the riverside.
Race back to the farm to dream with my uncle at the fireside.
(didn’t need to change a word of that song because Rush saw the future twenty years ago)
Jul 9, 2008 - 5:06 pm 45. punditius:This will not be opera.
It will be musical comedy. Well, probably not musical. And the comedy part will be unintentional.
But it will bear the same relationship to opera as it does to reality.
Jul 9, 2008 - 7:33 pm 46. Lem:I found a Drudge stanza called “developing” never before heard by human ears.
Rovadore Jesse jacko….
Jul 9, 2008 - 8:07 pm 47. Dick Stanley:Apologizo e Senatore Obama…..
Per crudo comentario
En abierto Microfono..
CNN decribio e ugly palabraso
E muy, muy, desparagoso….
Jacko en profundo desstreso…
FOX NEWS en possesion de tape…
Obama : No Comentare…
Developoso…Drudgeduro.
If the Gorebot commits suicide at the end, in despair over the big electric bill at his mansion, that would be worth seeing. Once.
Jul 9, 2008 - 8:33 pm 48. Roger L Simon:Lem, you win the Pajamas Media Premio Puccini for “Rovadore Jesse Jacko….”
Jul 9, 2008 - 9:14 pm 49. Brave Word:Gaya: I gotta spot that makes me hot and you ain’t been to it.
Jul 9, 2008 - 9:19 pm 50. Barrie:Algore: No,no,no,nono!
‘Fried kin’, what a gloriously appropriate collaborator.
OK, I know it’s not pronounced that way.
There has to be a scene where we hear the Voice of Gore from within the ‘Burning Bushes’. Moses Obama will surely have a key part.
Jul 9, 2008 - 9:31 pm 51. Some Things Are Just Impossible To Parody — Just Some Poor Schmuck:[...] Roger L. Simon » Beyond Parody: Gore and Friedkin at La Scala William Friedkin will direct the premiere of the opera “An Inconvenient Truth,” which will debut at La Scala in Milan on May 11, 2011. [...]
Jul 9, 2008 - 10:02 pm 52. Alex Reed:Notte e giorno non respirar
Per Alberto grasso nulla sa grandir
Piova e vento sopportar
Mangiar male e mal dormir.
Voglio far il gentiluomo verde
E non voglio più camminar
A piedi, non, non più!
Oh che caro galantuomo!
Vuol star dentro affamato,
Ed io far la sentinella!
Voglio far il gentiluomo verde
E non voglio più servir!
Gulfstream, si! A piedi, non!
E non voglio più servir!
Leporello, Don Giovani, Mozart
……………………………………………….
Day and night never breathing,
For fat Albert who is never satisfied,
Rain and wind to put up with,
Eating badly and badly sleeping.
I want to be a green gentleman,
And I don’t want to walk anymore.
On foot, no, no more!
Oh what a chivalrous gentleman!
He wants to stay inside, he’s famished,
And I am the lookout!
I want to be a green gentleman
And I don’t want to serve anymore!
Gulfstream, yes! On foot, no!
And I don’t want to serve anymore!
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Che faró senza Escalade
Dove andró senza il mio ben
Che faró
Dove andró
Che faró senza il mio giro pimpado.
Escalade, o Dio, risponde!
Escalade! Ah, non m’avvanza, Escalade!
più socorso, più Petrofina, più speranza
ne dal mondo, ne dal cel.
Orfeo ed Euridice, Gluck
………………………………………
What will I do without my Escalade
Where will I go without my dearest
What will I do
Where will I go
What will I do without my pimped out ride.
Escalade, Oh, God, answer me!
Escalade! Ah, nothing comes forth, Escalade!
No help, no Petrofina (gas), no hope
Neither from this world, nor from heaven.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Non so piu cosa son, cosa faccio,
Or di foco, ora sono di ghiaccio,
Ogni anidride carbonica cangiar di colore,
Ogni anidride carbonica mi fa palpitar.
Solo ai nomi d’Alberto, di accreditamenti del carbonio,
Mi si turba, mi s’altera il petto,
E a parlare mi sforza di razionamento
Un desio ch’io non posso spiegar.
Parlo d’carbonio vegliando,
Parlo d’Alberto sognando,
All’acqua, all’ombra, ai monti,
Ai fiori, all’erbe, ai fonti,
All’eco, all’aria, ai venti…..
Cherubino, Le Nozze di Figaro, Mozart
……………………………………………………….
I don’t know any more what I am, what I’m doing
Now I’m fire, now I’m ice,
Any carbon dioxide makes me change color,
Any carbon dioxide makes me quiver.
At just the names of Albert, of carbon credits,
My breast is stirred up and changed,
And a desire I can’t explain
Forces me to speak of rationing.
Awake I speak of carbon,
Asleep I speak of Albert,
To the water, the shade, the hills,
The flowers, the grass, the fountains,
The echo, the air, and the winds…….
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Jul 10, 2008 - 1:03 am 53. harmonicminer » Someone to Watch Over My Carbon Credits:[...] hat tip: Pajamas Media [...]
Jul 10, 2008 - 9:02 am 54. ray_g:It’s not from an opera, but at least a musical:
“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”
Jul 10, 2008 - 2:16 pm