Être Dieu: opéra-poème, audiovisuel et cathare en six parties (French for "Being God: a Cathar Audiovisual Opera-Poem in Six Parts") is a self-proclaimed "opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

-poem" written by Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí

Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....

, based on a libretto by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

Manuel Vázquez Montalbán was a prolific Spanish writer: journalist, novelist, poet, essayist, anthologue, prologist, humourist, critic, as well as a gastronome and a FC Barcelona supporter....

 with music by French avant-garde musician Igor Wakhévitch

Igor Wakhévitch

Igor Wakhévitch , son of the art director Georges Wakhévitch, is an avant-garde French composer who released a series of studio albums in the 1970s and composed the music for the Salvador Dalí opera Être Dieu...

. It was originally published in 1985.

The six-part work features Dali as God, Brigitte Bardot

Brigitte Bardot

Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot is a French former fashion model, actress, singer and animal rights activist. She was one of the best-known sex-symbols of the 1960s.In her early life, Bardot was an aspiring ballet dancer...

 as an artichoke and Catherine the Great and Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....

 do a striptease. It has been published in an extremely rare 3 LP box-set by a Spanish label. It was re-released in a regular 3CD box published by German-label Eurostar who subsequently went out of business, and there are few-to-no known performances of the work. Dalí painted "Self-Portrait" (1972) to mark the composition of the opera, which was later auctioned by the United States Customs Service

United States Customs Service

Until March 2003, the United States Customs Service was an agency of the U.S. federal government that collected import tariffs and performed other selected border security duties.Before it was rolled into form part of the U.S...

after being seized after Colombian drug lords tried to use the painting to launder money.