High Art Imitates Lowlife

News from London’s Royal National Theatre of a new opera based on the life of sleaze-TV host Jerry Springer raises questions about British sanity and drinking water but also suggests possibilities for other operas on this side of the Colorado River. According to news reports, “Jerry Springer: The Opera” is funny and features costumed louts shouting epithets, a male singer wearing naught but a diaper and a chorus line of dancing Ku Klux Klansmen. The opera thus seeks to capture the nous ne savons quoi of Springer’s syndicated TV show, where these sorts cavort, curse, confess and pummel each other, incited by a taunting studio audience. “It’s exactly the kind of work the National should be doing,” said Nicholas Hytner, the director.

“I like the moral dilemmas the Jerry Springer show poses for the people who watch it and the people who are on it,” said Richard Thomas, the opera’s composer.

Uh-huh. Such thinking helps explain the gap that caused the American Revolution. But whether such British humour translates to American humor and whether folks will pay a fistful of pounds to dress up and look down on actors misbehaving like real Americans on TV won’t be known until the April opening at the Lyttelton Theatre, where seats are bolted to the floor.

The new Springer production does open other opera opportunities. A very long, boring opera about a family named Osbourne in which every word of every lyric is bleeped. A 27-, no, 28-act epic chronicling L.A.’s love-hate feelings about pro football in which a developer and a lawyer sing the yet-to-be-famed duet, “Bella Stadia Profitorium.”

A three-act opera about port development featuring a chorus of arbitrators and dock workers in newly nonpolluting foreign boats (with Chinese surtitles projected above the stage). A four-hour opera about freeway congestion, with bumper-to-bumper singers never moving. This is performed only weekdays from 5 until 9 a.m. and 3:30 until 7:30 p.m. A two-act tragedy about a basketball team of giants whose star player postpones toe surgery so he can skip training camp. A six-act budgetary drama (cut to four) involving a governor in a castle feigning anguish over raising taxes, besieged by dueling choruses of partisan legislators. This one ends with the suicide by sword of everyone onstage, including numerous TV crews.

Also under development in this new age of appropriate drama is a light musical about the critical fiscal condition of urban trauma care.