Philip Glass Pens Walt Disney Opera. The headline enough was enough to make my jaw drop when I read it in Variety. And just to sweeten the deal, the opera is "to be staged in collaboration with Brit legit troupe Improbable." -- the company co-founded by the creators of Shockheaded Peter!! Awesome! One downside: it's slated for the 2012-2013 season, by which time we'll probably just watch the opera on ipod screens that have been installed inside our minds.

Opera, planned to kick off City Opera's 2012-13 season, will be based on Peter Stephan Jungk's German-language novel "The Perfect American." Story imagines the last months of Disney as seen through the eyes of a fictional Austrian cartoonist who worked for him.