"Brokeback Mountain" comprised a not insignificant portion of my senior year of college. After reading the thirty page or so short story (which was fantastic) in a rather interesting class called "The Hollywood Novel," I watched the movie on which it was based, and was given a few weeks to write an essay describing how the medium of film changed the telling of the story. Not only was it probably the best essay I wrote in my college career, but it was so good that my professor actually wondered during a private meeting whether I had some help writing it (while comparing it to my previous standard of "B" work). Now that it's being made into an opera, I'm tempted to write another4-5 double-spaced pages on the changes effected by its latest story telling technique just to prove my old professor wrong.
The biggest challenge of writing that paper would involve actually seeing the opera, for it's to debut in Madrid, Spain on Tuesday, according to the Wall Street Journal. Perhaps then I'll actually have to plagiarize this report. Luckily, a host of publications, including the WSJ, have offered a review. (Based on the WSJ's, it's going to be good.)
If I recall correctly, "Brokeback" author Annie Proulx approved of the film but wasn't directly involved in its creation. For the opera, however, she collaborated with director Charles Wuorinen and wrote the libretto, or the text portion of the performance, according to the New York Times' blog. Intending "to preserve the dry and laconic western tone" of the story, according to her statement, it would appear Proulx accomplished her goal, for Wuorinen called her work a "splendidly concise and apposite libretto, in which Proulx, through her characteristically laconic style, conveys character and scene with great efficiency."
Proulx, 78, won a Pulitzer Prize for "The Shipping News" in 1993. "That Old Ace in the Hole" in 2002 is also worth reading. Her last major work was "Fine Just the Way it is," which I haven't had the pleasure of reading yet. She's still writing, "stumbling along trying to finish a novel that has been interrupted so many times by the circumstances of life that I rejoice to find a few quiet hours very early in the morning and have taken to retiring at 8 so I can start work at 3 or 4 A.M.," she told the New York Times.
