QUICK TAKES - Feb. 13, 2009

The fine line between opera and soap opera just got blurrier.

Britain’s august Royal Opera said Thursday it is planning a show based on the life of Anna Nicole Smith, the model and stripper who married an octogenarian oil tycoon, starred in her own TV show and, in 2007, died of a drug overdose.

The company says the show will have music by British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage. The libretto is by Richard Thomas, co-creator of “Jerry Springer: The Opera,” an earlier merger of highbrow and lowbrow culture. It is due to run in the Royal Opera’s 2011 season.

The company’s director of opera, Elaine Padmore, told the Guardian newspaper that the show “is not going to be tawdry; it is going to be witty, clever, thoughtful and sad.”