An opera based on the tumultuous life of Anna Nicole Smith will hit the stage in 2011.

Britain’s Royal Opera has recruited composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and librettist Richard Thomas, who co-created “Jerry Springer: The Opera,” to work on the project.

“In broad outline, it will tell the story of her life, the people who influenced her, her progress,” Elaine Padmore, the company’s director of opera, told the Guardian newspaper.

“It’s not just a documentary about her, but a parable about celebrity and what it does to people. It can be moving, it can be funny and it tells universal truths about human frailty.”

The opera will be directed by Richard Jones and staged in London’s Covent Garden.

Smith, a former Playmate of the Year, married 89-year-old oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II in 1994, when she was 26. Marshall’s death was followed by a much-publicized legal battle between Smith and his son over his estimated $500 million fortune.

Smith died of a drug overdose in 2007 at the age of 39.






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