THE home of grand opera will soon be staging a different kind of tragedy. La Scala in Milan has commissioned a musical version of An Inconvenient Truth, the apocalyptic eco-documentary presented by Al Gore, the former American vice-president.

Gore will be replaced on stage by a cast of tenors and at least one soprano as the story of man-made climate change is told. The makers believe this format will be more suited to the 230-year-old opera house than the graph-heavy lectures given by Gore in his Oscar-winning 2006 film.

Gore, 60, will pick up a writing credit for his part in the work when it is performed in the opera house that hosted the premieres of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Verdi’s Nabucco. He and his wife, Tipper, will also be at the premiere.

The music is being written by Giorgio Battistelli, whose past operas include works based on the Frankenstein story and on the writings of Jules Verne. The composer believes an operatic treament of Gore’s film will allow people to see the dangers facing the world in a new light.

“Opera makes you reflect. Artists make you see things differently,” he said. “When we see a painting by Francis Bacon or a film by Sydney Pollack, we get a very precise idea of the problems of our century.”

The work is scheduled to be performed in 2011 as part of the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy. “I thought it could be a good idea to deal on this important occasion with a subject that involves not only Italy but the world,” Battistelli, 55, added. “It will be about the tragedy of our present situation. It is a great challenge to write an opera on such an unusual subject. It is certainly not the story of Romeo and Juliet.”

The chorus of La Scala will figure prominently in the opera to represent the world’s rapidly increasing population.

Hugh Canning, The Sunday Times’s opera critic, said: “Global warming is a relatively new concept but there are lots of operas that touch on ecology. [Wagner’s] The Ring is about the rape of nature.”

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