Who would have thought attempting to turn Al Gore's eco-friendly PowerPoint presentation into an opera might not go smoothly? Director William Friedkin has quit (fled?) the opera production, scheduled to premiere in 2011.

Milan's opera house La Scala announced last May that it was commissioning composer Giorgio Battistelli to turn Gore's An Inconvenient Truth into an opera. No one's really explained much about how Gore's carbon dioxide charts will come to life as an opera, but in July poet J.D. McClatchy signed on as librettist and Friedkin joined as director.

Friedkin, who directed 1970s classics The French Connection and The Exorcist but has spent the last couple decades directing films like Jade and Rules of Engagement, quit the production last week citing the old standby, "creative differences." But McClatchy, says it was for personal reasons. McClatchy then went on to needle Friedkin for wanting to use special effects in the sure-to-be-bizarro La Scala production, saying "opera isn't Hollywood." Oooohhhhhh snap!

Regardless of who directs it or bitches about it, we just hope there's a long aria sung by a dull-voiced Tennessean on a hydro lift. We'd fly to Italy for that. [NYT]