An Inconvenient Kind of Opera

Quite by accident I came across John Tierney's piece, The Aria of Prince Algorino. It's a wonderful spoof of the possible libretto of an operatic version of Al Gore's movie/book, An Inconvenient Truth, that officials of La Scala in Milan say the Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli has been commissioned to write it for the 2011 season.

I'm a bit unsure about the reality of this opera getting off the ground, but Tierney's 'libretto' outline is hilarious, full of wit and puns (Algorino being merely one of them). The comments that follow his article are quite astonishing: the number of people who take exception to what he's written far outweighs those who saw the humour in it all.

We're not likely to see this opera in a hurry, but an Australian comedy show, The Mansion, did its own take on it: you can see it below.