A modern opera adaption of Brokeback Mountain is set to open in Madrid later this week, AFP reports:
The Canadian bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch [right] as the hesitant Ennis and American tenor Tom Randle [left] as his devoted Jack play out their tale of secret love in homophobic 1960s Wyoming against a photographic backdrop of brooding mountains
At a dress rehearsal ahead of Tuesday night's world premiere, their voices soared over New York composer Charles Wuorinen's score, the orchestra sounding ominous and frenetic by turns as the doomed romance moved to its climax.
"The whole opera is about a typical kind of impossible situation, a tragic situation," said Wuorinen, who called on the writer Annie Proulx, author of the novella on which the film was based, to write the libretto.
"In this case, it's two people who in some way want to have a relationship which in their time is forbidden by society," Wuorinen told AFP.
"That's a very traditional operatic problem to deal with."
The English-language production will be premiering at Madrid's Teatro Real.
