with apologies to Nerva Nelli
New York City Opera has commissioned American composer Charles Wuorinen to write an opera based on “Brokeback Mountain,” a love story about two U.S. ranch-hands that won three Oscars when it was turned into a movie.
The opera house’s spokesman Gerard Mortier said in a statement on Sunday that Wuorinen had accepted an invitation to compose an opera entitled Haroun and the Sierra of Sissies, based on Annie Proulx‘s short story. It is slated to premiere during City Opera’s 2013 spring season in a production by Jonathan Miller. Casting for the work will include Ian Bostridge as Ennis del Mar and Shirtless Nathan Gunn as Jack Twist. Sylvain Cambreling, not shirtless, will conduct.
In preparation for the first performances of the opera five years hence, New York Times scribe Anthony Tommasini has already begun a weekly series of essays in which he posits a moral equivalence between the violent lynching of homosexuals with “the patronizing disdain of the tough-guy [dodecaphonic] modernists” against the oppressed minority of 20th century composers who used tonal methods.
Later in the series Tommasini will explain why the Haroun and the Sierra of Sissies should have been written by Thomas Adès in the first place.
IAN BOSTRIDGE??? OHYVEY!!!
With Ian Bostridge??!!! Gee, cant you wait to see England’s idea of ‘butch’ in cowboy gear? The concept is hilarious. Opera casting gets more ratty by the day.
And internet posters get less and less capable of spotting an obvious gag.
Oh! t’is a pty Bennie Britten is not around today, He could have written it for ‘darling Peter’, with an aria while he is sitting around a campfire sipping tea and cucumber sandwiches: before singing that he was wandering off to ‘have a lttle modest pee’ behind the bushes. He does’nt want to scare the sheep.
Proof there from harry that it’s not as easy as la cieca makes it look.
Gag or not, the projects and ideas of today’s opera commissioners are no less cock-eyed.
I think the director will be Laurent Pelly. I hear he’s good with sheep.
this does not sound good
Amerjake…I toyed with the idea that it was a joke but then with the conductor being mentioned too I thought it maybe was for real… Glad and RELIEVED to have been… huh.. had!
In German there is this designation of GAU – groesster anzunehmender Unfall – in connection with nuclear power plants… this could be the Opera GAU??
May we finally find out if Mr. Bostridge is keen on nipple rings? And he’s gonna top Nathan?? Oh my.