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.
Melchior?
Paddypig-
I’ve met the adopted daughter. Even at 83, La Amara could do a lot better. Just putting it out there.
paddypig, whatever Ms. Millo’s orientation, I do not believe it is quite accurate to say she is “pretty out.”
Lucine is from the old school where “lesbian” carried a very large amount of baggage in the manner of “The Killing of Sister George,” and it may well be that she is not comfortable identifying with that lifestyle, even if she appreciates that most of her romantic partners are women. And if she is not clear on how she identifies, that would be only one of her little eccentricities.
Perhaps Mr. Duesing wore full leather for the same reason (accordig to Paul Lynde) that motorcycle gangs wear full leather: “Because chiffon wrinkles!”
isn’t Amara Armenian, different part of the middle east all together (bad joke), Just used to see Madame Millo hanging out with what seemed to be her gal pal in her leather pants some twenty years ago. She didn’t seem to be afraid of being seen in the village in rather openly.
Nelli at 56, I’m not at all sure I understand your point. Are you under the illusion that someone said operatic tragedies don’t exist? My reference was to the many operas that take classic stories (like those of Orpheus or Romeo & Juliet) and give them a happy ending. This was also once common in spoken drama.
Dirk: I think if you had been a little more specific by saying “18th and early 19th century.” In fact, there was a generational change around 1830 or so from generally happy endings to generally “catastrophic” finales — all this in serious works, obviously.
It seems to La Cieca she might have touched on this subject when she presented Spontini’s OLYMPIA (Olympie) on Unnatural Acts of Opera. In that case the composer revised the original tragic ending to a more cheerful one in order to conform to international taste. (Presumably, in France the public would have known the original work so well they would not have tolerated so significant a deviation from the plot.)
So having gay friends in the village means your out? wow.
just want to be clear, because I am someone who lives in the village. I wear leather pants. OMG, should I tell my husband?
What a terrible idea for an opera!
No self-respecting homosexual would want to be part of the undertaking.
noOMG, I was trying to be a little discreet in my description. let’s leave it at that.
excuse typos