Annie Proulx, the author of Brokeback
Mountain, says a new opera based on her short story offers new
insight into the story's characters.
The libretto premiered Tuesday at the
Teatro Real in Madrid, Spain.
Proulx told the AP that the opera,
which follows a 2005 film starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal,
goes where the short story and film could not.
“I understood the opera would give
room, which the short story did not and which the film wasn't
particularly interested in doing, to explain and to open out and to
make a more gradual development of the character of Ennis from this
very tight closed, frustrated homophobic gay man who just can't get
it.” (The video is embedded on this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)
The production stars Tom Randle as Jack
Twist and Daniel Okulitch as Ennis del Mar.
“It's an operatic tragedy,”
composer Charles Wuorinen told The Los Angeles Times of
Proulx's cowboy love story, “and it embodies an up-to-date form of
a problem people have had forever. Stock problem. Stock tragic
characters. Loss. We've had that right from when Euridice dropped
dead in Orfeo.”