Brokeback Mountain is an opera by American composer Charles Wuorinen, with a libretto in English by Annie Proulx, based on her 1997 short story "Brokeback Mountain". They began work on it in 2008 under a commission by Gerard Mortier of the New York City Opera. He took the project with him to the Teatro Real of Madrid, where the opera was premiered on January 28, 2014.
Composition history
In 2007, Wuorinen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer, saw the 2005 film directed by Ang Lee and "was inspired by its operatic possibilities." He approached Proulx with the idea of turning her short story into an opera and "to ask for her blessing to adapt the story for opera. Proulx went one step further, offering to write the libretto".
As recounted by Ashifa Kassam: After reading Proulx' tale of doomed lovers, composer Charles Wuorinen knew he had the makings of a tragic opera. "In older operas there would be an illegitimate child or difference of social classes," said Wuorinen. "Same-sex love, especially when it takes place in an environment where it's absolutely forbidden, is a contemporary version of the same eternal problem."
Gerard Mortier, the incoming General Director of the New York City Opera, arranged to commission the work. When Mortier abruptly left the New York City Opera in 2008, the project was in limbo for a time, but he took it with him to his new post as General Director of Teatro Real in Madrid.
Work on the opera was started in August 2008 and completed in February 2012. As Philip Kennicott notes: While other composers might have found the taciturn and often painfully inarticulate characters a challenge, Wuorinen was inspired. Brokeback Mountain was a struggle toward the possibility of expression, about a groping toward language and awareness and self-knowledge. "I take the position that since it takes a long time for any word to get out, that what is laconic on the page can seem quite expansive on the opera stage," he says.
Performance history
The world premiere took place 28 January 2014 in Madrid directed by Ivo van Hove and conducted by Titus Engel. The opera received its German premiere in Aachen on 7 December 2014 in a production directed by and conducted by Kazem Abdullah. A chamber version for 24 players was commissioned by the Salzburger Landestheater and premiered on 27 February 2016, directed by Jacopo Spirei, and conducted by Adrian Kelly.
Roles
Synopsis
The two-hour opera is performed without intermission.
Act 1
Scene 1: 1963, Aguirre's trailer
Scene 2: Bar, Old Longhorn
Scene 3: On the mountain
Scene 4: Main camp, four days later
Scene 5: Main camp, next day sunset
Scene 6: Main camp, next morning
Scene 7: Dress shop
Scene 8: Lower main camp, twilight
Scene 9: Next morning, first light
Scene 10: Farm machinery salesroom, Texas
Scene 11: 1967, interior Alma and Ennis’ apartment in Riverton
Act 2
Scene 1: 1967, Del Mar apartment
Scene 2: Motel Siesta
Scene 3: Six years later, Del Mar apartment
Scene 4: Farm machinery salesroom, Texas
Scene 5: Del Mar apartment
Scene 6: Thanksgiving, Alma and Bill's dining room and kitchen
Scene 7: 1983, (10 years later) in the mountains, late afternoon
Scene 8: Early autumn, downtown Riverton, in front of post office
Scene 9: Twist kitchen
Scene 10: Jack's bedroom
Scene 11: Ennis' trailer
Music
Wuorinen has been described as an "unabashedly complex Modernist." The composer expressed his views on the kind of musical idiom suited to this subject matter – and to his own tastes in music: "Opera should deploy the full resources of musical composition and not be restricted to any kind of model, including a model of what is lyric singing," says Wuorinen. The composer's personal litany of great opera is revealing – the works of Monteverdi, "some of Wagner," Schoenberg's Moses und Aron, Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, and of course the operas of Alban Berg. "You can tell where my sympathies lie."