HEAVING flesh and passionate femme fatales are staple fodder for the opera stage. But there’s never been a heroine quite like Anna-Nicole Smith.

The Playboy centrefold’s legendary chest landed her a modelling career, a 90-year-old billionaire husband and a reality TV show.

But she also suffered an untimely demise – a messy painkiller overdose in a Florida hotel room aged 39.

Now Grays composer Mark-Anthony Turnage has brought her tragic story to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.

Dubbed by the New York Times as “one of Britain’s most successful classical composers”, the Thurrock man is Anna-Nicole’s latest suitor, with a whole new challenge on his hands – to turn a bunnygirl into a tragic soprano .

But Mark-Anthony is the real star of the opera.

The Royal Opera House wanted him badly enough to give him carte blanche in choice of subject. It isn’t just Covent Garden that is keen to work with him, on his terms.

John Paul Jones, the Led Zeppelin bassist, has signed up to play in the orchestra. Antonio Pappano, the Royal Opera House’s director of music, is conducting.

Gerard Finley, one of the world’s leading baritones, is also on board to play Anna-Nicole’s lover (the lady herself is played by the Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek). The libretto is by Richard Thomas, famous for Jerry Springer: the Opera.

Mark-Anthony was born in Grays in 1951. His parents still live there, and Mark-Anthony visits them, although he now lives in Chelsea, with his cellist wife.

His father worked at the Mobil refinery, his mother was a gifted musician who gave up playing publicly “when she had me”.

The stuff going into his young ears was magnificent, but uncool. Instead of rock concerts, he went to proms, starting at the age of nine. Instead of playing guitar in a teen band, he played the organ at the Baptist Tabernacle in Grays.

He went to the Royal College of Music where teacher Hans Werner Henze, himself an opera composer, recognised his talent. “He convinced me I’d be a good dramatic composer, and he commissioned my first work, for the Munich Bienniale,” he said.

“Everything snowballed from there, There were times in the middle of the writing when I couldn’t quite believe it.

“There are no books to consult called How to Write an Opera.

“But I do like to work outside my comfort zone. I’d be bored doing relatively easy work all the time.”

His first major opera, the Silver Tassie, about a footballer mutilated in the First World War, premiered in February 2000, winning an Olivier award.

Last year, he turned heads when he conducted Hammered Out, based on Beyonce’s Single Ladies, at the Proms in Albert Hall.

Before writing another opera, he had to find the material. “It starts with liking the subject. If I never find another suitable subject, I’ll never write another opera,” he said.

Then Anna Nicole arrived in his life. After three years of strenuous effort, Anna Nicole was due to open yesterday (Thursday). The world will finally know whether bunnygirls make grand opera.