British playwright Richard Thomas, the brains behind Jerry Springer: The Opera, is collaborating with composer Mark-Anthony Turnage to turn the tragic life of Anna Nicole Smith into an on-stage extravaganza. The opera will be staged at the Royal Opera House in Britain.

“It’s an incredible story,” Thomas tells The Independent. “It’s very operatic and sad. She was quite a smart lady with the tragic flaw that she could not seem to get through life without a vat of prescription painkillers.”

“For me, it ends when she does. It’s an American story. I love American culture. Especially for opera, the stories seem to work on a grander, more epic scale. They seem more extreme — it’s a blessing and a curse.”

Anna Nicoel Smith died from an overdose of prescription drugs in Florida on Feb. 8, 2007. She was thirty-nine years old.