Ruth Leon recommends… Brokeback Mountain – Opera
Ruth Leon recommendsBrokeback Mountain – Opera
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This is a modern opera adaptation by Charles Wuorinen of Annie Proulx’s short story previously adapted by Ang Lee for the Oscar-winning film. It marks composer Wuorinen’s return to the opera stage with his most ambitious work.
Brokeback Mountain is the beautfiul and tragic story of ranch hand Ennis del Mar and rodeo cowboy Jack Twist, two young men who meet and fall in love on a fictional Wyoming Mountain in 1963.
It stars Daniel Okulitch as Ennis del Mar and Tom Randle as Jack. The conductor of the chorus and orchestra at the Opera Madrid is Titus Engel and the Stage Director is Jérémie Cuvillier.
Wuorinen says “It’s a story of doomed love, in this case a complex homosexual relationship taking place in a very homophobic society.”
It’s Baaaaaack! I’ve spent many summers in western Wyoming. It is spectacularly beautiful. This opera is not. The ugliness of the whole score makes it unlistenable for me and most people. No beautiful cantilena arias or ensemble work. Not a toe-tapping moment or memorable tune in the whole thing. As a one time cowboy, it was nice seeing guys dressed like I do, but I’ll never listen to this awful music again. I don’t know why anyone thinks Wourinen is a good composer; Puccini he ain’t. (Go ahead, click Thumbs Down.)
When the commission was announced, a lot of observers here in the US thought it was a terrible match of composer and material and wondered why on earth Wuorinen was the composer Annie Proulx gave the rights to. (Even some who like, or at least don’t mind, Wuorinen’s music thought it was a bad fit.)
Wuorinen wrote some lovely chunes….
Here is a fragment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9pb3RP12YE
It is slightly ridiculous, to be polite, to watch atonally-cuddling cowboys in love.
For the real masochists among us, here is the whole thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM3fcmLb4Iw&t=2627s
On paper, such subjects and such treatment may seem really interesting, but in the reality of a serious production it turns into its own satire.
To elaborate a bit, serving possible woke reactions:
The subject is a quite extreme one with which not many audience members will be able to identify. A composer then has to make the happenings universal, to make the emotional developments accessible to a wider public, and that is only possible through a musical idiom that can get across. 20C modernist idioms are fundamentally unsuitable for that, because they create an obstacle already as an idiom, which has a very narrow range of expression: the morbid, the destructive, the splintered, the nightmarish, the absurd, the impossible etc. etc.
So, if the composer uses a modernist idiom for such an extreme subject, he unintentionally paints it as extreme, morbid, destructive, impossible etc. and that surely was not the intention of the whole undertaking, otherwise it would have been meant as a rightwing anti-gay opera.
I think it’s a nice example of an expensive woke flop.
Show us on the doll where the woke hurt you.
He’s still searching.
Sally
That’s some impressive word salad to try and shoehorn in some grumpy feelings about an opera that bugged you because it was about gay men.
Did it bug him because it was about gay men? I thought he made some good points about the capacity of modern music to express joy and love. But I suppose anyone who is a self-hating gay will welcome music that tries to express love in terms of shrieks of agony.
A woke reaction.
Any subject treated in the way of Wuorinen will sound morbid, alienated, nightmarish, etc. etc., so if you want break a lance for gay love you have to use a language which is capable of doing that.
it is always the music which carries an opera in terms of meaning, hence the fact that silly plots with good music are still in the repertoire while great plots with silly music aren’t.
John, you devalue your musical point by falling for the use of the sociological trolling term “woke.” Your point that Wuorinen’s style is not apt for the story may be valid, but your implication that telling the story is only being done because it is ‘woke’ is reactionary.
Read my comment on Keith’s woke reaction.
I have not seen or heard the opera — I saw the movie and feel I have experienced that story, done reasonably sensitively and intelligently. But I think the above analysis is pretty sensible, and sensitive.
And I am seduced by the notion that atonal screech music is “woke.” That much of it would waken the dead is undeniable. But that it is in line with the throwback mentality of all these revisionists and iconoclasts — well, yes, actually.
Well observed, Mr, Borstlap.
I saw the movie and found it moving and deeply disturbing for the painting of society. There is no way to imagine the subject being underscored by atonal meandering.
Out of respect for others I will not comment.
Whenever I hear this kind of meandering and essentially tuneless stuff, my second thought (just after “Would it have been asking too much to expect an actual melody once in a while?”) is: “I hope the performers were very well-compensated for learning this score.”
Why do any of the grumps here think we are dying to know the you don’t like this music? As Wuorinen might say, “who cares?” Please go find some other music to hum and tap your toes to and be happy for a little while. Griping about “unlistenable” modern music got tedious some time during the 1500s. I will return the favor by refraining myself from telling you how ghastly I think those Tchaikovsky symphonies are. Deal?
If it is silly or ugly or unlistenable it must be really good because in 1600 there were people protesting against Monteverdi.
It’s a modernist trope which has served modernist attempt at music very well in the last century.
Watching it made me wonder what Britten would have made of it. Sigh.
I think Britten was far too uptight about his sexuality/romantic inclination to set a story like this.
I wonder what Bernstein would have made of it. Or even Tobias Picker or Jake Heggie or Ricky Ian Gordon or Missy Mazzoli. I was a little mystified that Annie Proulx gave the rights to Wuorinen, of all composers. But maybe nobody else asked?
“Woke” – anything I disagree with or don’t like.