An Inconvenient Opera

An Inconvenient Truth ain't over. The Fat Lady is doing her warm-ups. (AP Images)"]

If the movie wasn't thrilling enough -- songs about emissions and birds with tar on their feathers sang in soprano could be the next big thing. La Scala opera house in Milan agrees -- and plans to do an opera version of Al Gore's documentary during its 2011 season.

Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli is helming the project in hopes to draw more attention to the world's environmental issues. Battistelli, who is the artistic director of Verona's Arena Foundation, is a prolific composer of operas who has turned works by Shakespeare (Richard III), Jules Verne, Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) and Pasolini (Theorem) into operatic performances.