A young woman wants to get out of the small town of Mexia, out of oppressive family circumstances and out of a dull marriage with a boring childhood friend. Determined, she starts into a breathtaking life. Her career begins as a nightclub stripper, a virtuoso cosmetic surgeon turns the pretty provincial girl into a sex bomb that doesn't miss her target: the oil billionaire Marshall, well into his eighties and looking for one last great love, marries the Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith, dies as planned after a short marriage and leaves her his fortune, which is why his descendants overwhelm Anna with lawsuits. When her dream of a carefree, rich and free life seems to have come true, Anna Nicole finds herself caught in a terrible downward spiral. Badly advised by her greedy lawyer and lover Howard Stern, she gets into financial difficulties and slides deeper and deeper into a swamp of drugs and loss of reality. Her beloved son Daniel from her first marriage died of his drug addiction, and shortly after giving birth to a daughter with a star, Anna Nicole Smith died of an overdose at the age of just 39.
From the fate of the modern "Traviata" Anna Nicole, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Richard Thomas have created a gaudy revue-opera: a fairy tale of the American dream, a colorful didactic play about sex, money and love, which comes to a tragic end before everyone's eyes. Anna Nicole becomes the victim of a media society's greed for money and sensationalism, to whose rules she has agreed wholeheartedly. A fate of our time, a touching and strong female figure who never demands one thing: pity. Turnage's stirring music works with contemporary compositional techniques, but also with influences from jazz, rock and pop.
