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From AP:

'Brokeback Mountain' to premiere as opera in 2013

The New York City Opera commissioned Charles Wuorinen to compose an opera based on "Brokeback Mountain," the 1997 short story by Annie Proulx that became the basis for a 2005 movie that won three Academy Awards.

The opera is scheduled to premiere in spring 2013, City Opera said Sunday. It will be City Opera's second Wuorinen premiere, following "Haroun and the Sea of Stories," which was based on a Salman Rushdie novel and opened in October 2004.

"Ever since encountering Annie Proulx's extraordinary story I have wanted to make an opera on it, and it gives me great joy that Gerard Mortier and New York City Opera have given me the opportunity to do so," Wuorinen said in a statement.

"Brokeback Mountain" is a cowboy romance about two ranch-hand buddies who start a homosexual affair when they meet on the fictional mountain in 1963.

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I only know Wuorinen's music through what I've heard at NYCB, but it does make me ask - with Gustavo Santaolalla's soundtrack now so associated with the story, will Wuorinen incorporate or ignore those associations? What do people think, is he the right man for the job?

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Haroun had a great story, wonderful performances and a terrific physical production.

We had a friend in the cast, a seasoned singer, who felt the music was unsingable and feared for some of the younger singers in the cast. Apparently they were suffering various problems he associated with great strain on the vocal apparatus.

The Ades opera, The Tempest, also sounded a vocal ordeal to me but was beautiful music. Haroun had not a moment of beauty to redeem itself.

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I like Wourinen's instrumental music a lot, but I didn't think Haroun displayed much facility with the human voice or an ear for setting text (it struck me as pretty awkward at the time, but then I only heard it once). Haroun and Brokeback are both pretty sentimental in their way, despite the patina of exoticism and otherness of their setting and subject matter, so Wourinen wouldn't have been the first composer to come to mind for either. I vote for William Bolcom.

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IHaroun and Brokeback are both pretty sentimental in their way, despite the patina of exoticism and otherness of their setting and subject matter, so Wourinen wouldn't have been the first composer to come to mind for either. I vote for William Bolcom.

I vote for nobody and thinks it's a boring idea, like a sequel to or remake of a film that doesn't need one. It's the movie, not the story, that most people know and will be seeing as adapted, and it frankly sounds like an obvious kind of choice but superficial and embarassing, unlike 'Elmer Gantry', which I've not yet heard (and is the only one of these kinds of things that has sounded to me promising). But I did finally get around to a DVD of Britten's 'Death in Venice' the other night, and could bear about half of it. Britten is one of my absolute favourite composers, so I had to hate this to abort it--but the Aschenbach was made not to seem just old and having missed good sex--but unnecessarily bald and overly plain; as well, the young dancers who did Tadziu and his friends just looked ridiculous rolling around and lolling about mostly clumsily. I then read that they had made sure that Britten (and perhaps librettist Myfanwy Piper) not see the Visconti film with Dirk Bogarde and Bjorn Andresen, although that could only have helped; because, for all the critical dismissal of the film, it holds the secret to what Aschenbach is really looking for, i.e., it puts the power in Tadziu's hands, not Aschenbach's, which is the only way to make the impossible infatuation work toward its tragic end. To watch Robert Tear sing endlessly with the hotel staff (all that 'Signore! Signore!) and the various queens, many of whom are made to seem like 60s 'vintage body mags' is pretty pale after the intensity of Dirk Bogarde, is to watch something drab and untheatrical. Bogarde was easily conceivable as someone Tadziu might be inspired to tease and flirt with, but Tear is not. As well, Paul Zeplichal as Tadziu is not even alluring as dressed in this Glyndebourne Touring Opera production, looking not inaccessible but more like a Caravaggio type and already slightly fat. I couldn't believe how dreary it was; but it has made me understand more than ever that an opera is by now harder to really sell than any other art form.

I haven't yet seen nor heard Previn/Fleming 'Streetcar Named Desire', which I'm equally prejudiced toward. Some of these obvious choices for opera are, I think, done because they will still seem accessible even if the transition is not smooth at all, because even it doesn't work, the basic material is familiar enough to have something to hold onto. And in this last case, one could glory in Renee Fleming's voice, even if I can't imagine a less credible actress for Blanche Dubois.

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I'm inclined to agree with papeetepatrick and I suspect this one is DOA. I certainly didn't read the story or see the movie thinking "Great - now if only someone would set this to music!" Thanks for posting , Ray. We'll have to see how this develops.

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I thought the opposite: opera is wonderful at expressing relationships, and there are many in this one: between the two mean, between each and his wife/girlfriend, the parents, etc. Not to mention the inner dialogues that would make great arias, and the cast would be the right size to make it produceable. In the right hands, this could be the "Susannah" of our day, which is, sadly, bitingly relevant.

I thought of Jake Heggie because of "The End of the Affair", which was not only adapted from a literary source, but an opera in which he used the specific qualities to paint individual, believable family and love relationships. He also writes melodically enough to write blooming music for the two protagonists. Wuorinen, not so much. If any reason, that is why I think it's DOA.

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I thought the opposite: opera is wonderful at expressing relationships, and there are many in this one: between the two mean, between each and his wife/girlfriend, the parents, etc. Not to mention the inner dialogues that would make great arias, and the cast would be the right size to make it produceable. In the right hands, this could be the "Susannah" of our day, which is, sadly, bitingly relevant.

I can see that point of view as very viable, but Leigh's mention of the familiarity of the soundtrack--to which I'd definitely add Willie Nelson's 'He Was A Friend of Mine' over the closing credits, and I remember this vividly as totally integral and indispensable to the emotional impact of the film, although I've only seen it once right when it came out in late 2005--strikes me as very important. It may be whether one wants to see something universal in this, I don't really, but rather am interested in the particular here, which is cowboys in the Rocky Mountains, and I want country/western music with it. I like opera and cowboys both a great deal, but I don't think they usually have that much in common :lol: But who knows, maybe Jack will learn how to play the piano as well as eat truffle sauces when he marries the rich man's daughter....

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I'm not particularly concerned about Brokeback's having been a movie before it becomes an opera; what I *am* concerned about is whether the original story will be turned into a good libretto. (I agree with Helene that the story effers real possibilities for arias, ensembles, set peices and the like.) Writing a good libretto is hard, exhibit number one being Toni Morrison's libretto for Margaret Garner. Margaret Garner's story *should* have generated something genuinely "operatic" in the best, theatrical sense of that word; in Morrison's hands (the hands of a Nobel laureate, no less), it didn't. It came off like something from the Hallmark channel -- this with a plot that contains sexual violation, a lynching, a mother murdering her children, and a trial. It should have been vastly more shattering than it was. (I think Morrison's libretto was more at fault than Danielpour's score.)

Anyway, if Puccini could write a cowboy opera (The Girl of the Golden West) I'm not going to deny Wourinen his. Bolcom has certainly demonstrated the ability to evoke the effects of the relevant popular or folk genres in his operas (not to mention his magnificent oratorio, Songs of Innocence and Experience, which you can get at a bargain price from Naxos, and which I heartily recommend), so it's been done. (Bolcom and Wuorinen are admittedly very different composers in style and approach.)

I don't remember Brokeback's soundtrack at all; what I do remember is the scenery -- and of course the lack of scenery and sheer dreariness of the protagonists' surroundings when they have to leave the mountain. I'll be curious to see how the set designer and director handle staging this thing.

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I certainly remember the soundtrack - one of the most effective parts of the film, I thought.

Thanks, Kathleen. I’m still inclined to be skeptical. Much of the story’s power and appeal lies in what is not said and in actions not taken. An opera can add to this kind of story with the characters revealing their true feelings in song, but I really don’t see Ennis bawling his heart out in an aria telling all as adding much to the proceedings. And choosing the story after the movie has been made seems a trifle opportunistic, which doesn’t matter if the end product is good. Always happy to be proved wrong, though.

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I don't really, but rather am interested in the particular here, which is cowboys in the Rocky Mountains, and I want country/western music with it. I like opera and cowboys both a great deal, but I don't think they usually have that much in common :) But who knows, maybe Jack will learn how to play the piano as well as eat truffle sauces when he marries the rich man's daughter....

Heggie wrote a perfectly believable period song for "The End of the Affair" and no one in that opera ate truffles. (It was a decidedly middle class creation.) I'm sure he could create a western feeling. Wuorinen, not so much.

I tuned out much of the movie soundtrack. I don't like music to tell me five minutes ahead of time how to feel.

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I like opera and cowboys both a great deal, but I don't think they usually have that much in common.

The San Francisco Opera is perhaps moving in this direction with its new Das Reingold set in part in gold rush California with gold panning Alberich and overalled Rhinemaidens (see recent Fin Times and LA Times reviews).

Regarding Tadzio and Ennis, I'll second that both "Death in Venice" and "Brokeback Mountain" are small, beautifully made things. To expand them distorts them and shows their flaws. And with all respect to Visconti and Britten and Jeff Edwards, Tadzio should really only be seen through Aschenbach's eyes. There's that interesting scene when one of Tadzio's friends pins him down on the beach, a little story in itself--how can you translate that? Perhaps the Straubs or Robert Bresson would have made some interesting thing of D in V, but short.

At the New Works festival here in SF there was a Sleeping Beauty set upon the sleepy Goldberg Variations, Tchaikovsky standing on Bach's delicate shoulders. Mann's and Annie Prioux's bones are delicate too.

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Well, if it were to be an adaptation of the movie, I would agree that Wuorinen does not seem like a natural fit. But he says it's the original story that interests him. Paul accurately calls Proulx's writing laconic, and I would think it's that economy of means that attracts artists like Wuorinen and Lee--it gives them plenty of room to exercise their own creative imagination and individuality. When you're talking about geniuses the caliber of Wuorinen and Lee, that's a pretty exciting prospect. In this case, I'm guessing Wuorinen will stay closer than Lee did to the spare and unsentimental tone of Proulx, but whatever he does, I'll happily go hoping it surprises me and succeeds on its own terms.

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The San Francisco Opera is perhaps moving in this direction with its new Das Reingold set in part in gold rush California with gold panning Alberich and overalled Rhinemaidens (see recent Fin Times and LA Times reviews).

Thanks for the information--I'll take your word for it, and these kinds of things are usually flash-in-the-pan one-semester affairs. People want to see the real Valhalla after they get their 'creative' avant-garde jollies out of the way. There used to be a lot of criticism of Wieland Wagner sets at Bayreuth, all sleek and sharp, but there wasn't much question that it was going to be German. My first thought for at least one of the sisters was Tyne Daly dubbed, then maybe Jodi Foster as another (also dubbed) and Sharon Stone dubbed as Brunnhilde--if they can keep it up till 'Walkure'. Make a movie into an opera (even if it was known by a select few in story form first--I haven't read the Proulx story and doubt I'll get to it; maybe most of the people who want to see this as opera will have, though), why not make an opera into a movie? It's hard enough to imagine the actual Holderlin Rhine not already having been polluted by industry in the 19th century (even if the Twilight pre-dates the composition), all that talk of the 'eternal unchanging motions of the Rhine'--even if the Krupps weren't working their steel cannon factories for the Franco-Prussian War yet (Essen may not be near the Rhine, of course).

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why not make an opera into a movie?

And a short story about the opera/movie. Or, in a Rene Clair "Le Million" version, Ennis and Jake as stagehands in a lover's quarrel caught behind the backsides of the sets of the opera, as artificial autumn leaves fall down over them.

It's hard enough to imagine the actual Holderlin Rhine not already having been polluted by industry in the 19th century (even if the Twilight pre-dates the composition), all that talk of the 'eternal unchanging motions of the Rhine'

Most of the substantial mercury pollution of the San Francisco Bay comes--and still comes with the winter rains--from the mercury used to process the gold in the gold rush. And the money from the gold still "tumbles down" to finance the opera (and Tuesday nights of the ballet) in San Francisco. We're all implicated in this crazy mess.

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Ennis and Jake as stagehands in a lover's quarrel caught behind the backsides of the sets of the opera, as artificial autumn leaves fall down over them.

That's marvelous, almost Brokeback Mountain meets Les Enfants du Paradis, although Carne. :clapping:

Most of the substantial mercury pollution of the San Francisco Bay comes--and still comes with the winter rains--from the mercury used to process the gold in the gold rush. And the money from the gold still "tumbles down" to finance the opera (and Tuesday nights of the ballet) in San Francisco. We're all implicated in this crazy mess.

Indeed we are, which is why you never knew which of Wagner's characters he actually sympathized with, because he might have just been upset that Wotan couldn't get over the tedium of Fricka and save the real estate, i.e., he may have felt his distaste for the eternal, impersonal gods was not unalloyed with lust, so could have balanced it out with all that constant harping on love for the Volsung but making sure that Brunnhilde had to suffer even though her insolent betrayal failed to save Siegmund from one of those classically 'inevitable deaths' due to something suppoedly understood as ignoble, but not necessarily done.... :excl:

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(not to mention his magnificent oratorio, Songs of Innocence and Experience, which you can get at a bargain price from Naxos,

Thanks for mentioning this, Kathleen, I will listen to this soon, as NYPL has it for an even better bargain price. At this moment I'm listening to Wuorinen's Great Bamboula fr String Orchestra. It's arresting enough, coming after Carter's elegant Variations for Orchestra on Levine's Vol. 2 Documents of the Munich Years CD.

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IHaroun and Brokeback are both pretty sentimental in their way, despite the patina of exoticism and otherness of their setting and subject matter, so Wourinen wouldn't have been the first composer to come to mind for either. I vote for William Bolcom.

I vote for nobody and thinks it's a boring idea, like a sequel to or remake of a film that doesn't need one. It's the movie, not the story, that most people know and will be seeing as adapted, and it frankly sounds like an obvious kind of choice but superficial and embarassing,

Point analyzed and approved.

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