NEW YORK - 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.

3 Comments:

I think I'm going to cry.

I mean, if movies made into movies weren't bad enough, they HAD to do this one. Jeezus.

Not that I have anything against gays, I don't in the slightest. I just don't think this will be any good.

By  Anonymous, at 1:30 PM

oh dear.

an...opera?

what?

By  Anonymous, at 3:12 PM

I seem to be the only person on Earth who doesn't think hat this is such a bad idea. The emotions are big and sweeping--perfect for an opera (to borrow a phrase from In My Life).

That said, Wuorinen--as much as I like his work--is probably a really bad choice to write it.

By  gruyere, at 1:28 PM

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