The Teatro Real in Madrid on Tuesday
will premiere the opera Brokeback Mountain.
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 Annie
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.”
According to the Times, the
libretto is truer to Proulx's short story than the 2005 film, which
starred Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Okulitch, who plays Ennis, said of the
story: “There are loves that come along and hit you like lightning
and they're never to be repeated. And that's what this was for them.
It's only at the very end that Ennis is able to say who he is. And
who's that? He's a man who loves Jack.”