News

Al Gore Goes Opera?

Global warming is an issue that former Vice President Al Gore is passionate about. His Academy Award winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, for which a companion book exists, is set to be adapted into opera form. Yes, an opera.

Giorgio Battistelli, former artistic chief of the Arena in Verona, is overseeing the adaptation in hopes of emphasizing the reality that the planet is heating up at alarming levels. The opera will play at the Scala in Milan in 2011. Battistelli has promised that the film will reflect Gore's message.

Is a Broadway production next? Gore was in talks with a New York-based producer last year about translating his film to theater, with Gore himself starring, but nothing ever came of it. If funny fluff like Legally Blonde can be made into a Broadway show, it would be a testament to the medium's power if a serious, issue-driven film could, too.

—The ARTISTdirect Staff
06.04.08