Brokeback Mountain: A Short Story, a Film, Now an Opera?

By Eric Patterson

            During the summer of 2007, fans of Brokeback Mountain, the short story and the film, may have noticed rumors in the press and on the internet about the possible production of Brokeback Mountain, the musical. Many assumed it must just be another "joke" generated by the endemic discomfort the movie's success seems to have caused, at least for some, and dismissed the additional gossip that movie stars Hugh Jackman and James Marsden might be cast as Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist as wishful thinking on the part of gay fans. Then at the end of the summer, it turned out that what actually might be in the works was Brokeback Mountain, the opera. This came from an unlikely source for opera information, the "Rush and Molloy" gossip column in the tabloid New York Daily News. But it was confirmed when representatives of the distinguished modernist composer, Charles Wuorinen, announced that he had received permission from Annie Proulx to compose an opera based on her short story. For all those who were moved by the story and the movie, and particularly for opera lovers, this raises intriguing possibilities about what the next representation of the lives of Ennis and Jack may be like.

First, a little about the composer. Over the past half-century Charles Wuorinen has composed an extraordinary array of music, much of it in the challenging twelve-tone or serial style that originates in the work of Arnold Schoenberg, although Wuorinen has a highly distinctive individual voice, and in recent years has composed some music that is less strictly atonal. He has created works in virtually every form, including eight numbered symphonies, a "microsymphony," an "ecclesiastical" symphony, four piano concerti, tone poems, chamber and solo works, and vocal and choral pieces; some of his works have descriptive religious titles, such as Theologoumenon and Pentecost. Wuorinen already has done one opera, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, based on the novel by Sir Salman Rushdie, with a libretto by the British poet James Fenton. Haroun is a highly imaginative children's story on the serious subject of freedom of imagination and expression, which Rushdie published in 1990, after the Ayatollahs had issued their notorious fatwa ordering his assassination. The opera first was staged in 2004 by the New York City Opera, and has met with considerable critical success. Like Annie Proulx, Wuorinen is a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, which he won in 1970 for Time's Encomium.

The news that Wuorinen is working on an opera based on Proulx's story has led to speculation about what such a work might be like. The film already has a subtle, beautiful, and evocative score in a style quite different from Wuorinen's, which raises the question of what relationship his opera might have, if any, to the music from the movie. Using a small group of players, including guitar, pump organ, pedal steel guitar, and percussion, the Argentine composer Gustavo Santaolalla created music wonderfully suggestive of the beautiful, lonesome landscapes in the film, the awakening desire between Ennis and Jack, and the fear, frustration, and sadness they and their wives endure. Santaolalla's own instrumental compositions are integrated with popular country hits of the Sixties and Seventies, such as "King of the Road," "The Devil's Right Hand," "It's So Easy to Fall in Love," and "D-I-V-O-R-C-E," performed by artists including Rufus Wainwright, Teddy Thompson, Roger Miller, Steve Earle, Linda Ronstadt, and Tammy Wynette, along with traditional songs such as "He Was a Friend of Mine," sung by Willie Nelson. Santaolalla and his collaborators also composed original songs in an appropriate country style, including "A Love That Will Never Grow Old," "No One's Ever Gonna Love You Like Me," "I Will Never Let You Go," and "I Don't Want To Say Goodbye," which are performed by Emmylou Harris, Mary McBride, Jackie Greene, and Teddy Thompson. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences certainly demonstrated its limitations in its failure to recognize the quality of the acting in Brokeback Mountain or the overall quality of the film (which may well have been the result of the widely reported failure of many of its members even to watch the film), but it did honor Santaolalla with the award for Best Score. Given the success and popularity of Santaolalla's music, those who are curious about the possible opera wonder whether it would refer to the film score. Would Wuorinen use a similar tonal style, or even quote Santaolalla's music, or quote some of the country music characteristic of the time and place in which the story is set? Or would he compose completely original and different music? Though the film music is beautiful, probably the best approach would be to create something entirely new.

                Some have suggested that the spare, restrained nature of the story and the lyrical, subdued quality of Ang Lee's film should incline the composer toward a work on a small scale, a chamber opera, but Howard Stokar, Wuorinen's manager, has said instead that "It would be a big piece, something for an actual opera house." What sort of big opera would Brokeback make? Opera is perhaps the most wonderfully complex and artificial of art forms, and for many Americans is almost synonymous with extravagance, with music, singing, acting, and staging on a giant scale. Though some of the most moving and popular operas, such as La Boheme or Tosca, are in the verismo style, presenting relatively realistic characters and situations, they often have gorgeously dramatic music, and of course many other operas transport their audiences to utterly fantastic realms inhabited by kings and princesses, gods and valkyries. Apart from the magnificent landscape, the world of Brokeback Mountain is about as far from the mythological grandeur of The Ring or Turandot as you can get. Certainly the brilliant technical staging skills of a major opera company could evoke a sense of the rough beauty of the mountain wildernesses where Jack and Ennis are able to be together, and could effectively contrast this with the shabbiness of the places they live in Wyoming and the gaudiness of the Newsomes' world in Texas, but what would the singing be like? Even operas with realistic settings usually have powerful music to express the characters' big emotions. Jack certainly has his share of these, but central to the tragedy is Ennis's fear to express what he feels. He's naturally a man of few words, and though he opens up to Jack, and eventually feels overwhelming loss and grief, he does so without grand gestures that would seem to lend themselves to a big operatic performance. In the film, perhaps the most powerful of many powerful scenes comes when Heath Ledger depicts Ennis finding the two shirts Jack has saved and hidden for twenty years in what amounts to a closet within a closet at the Twists's ranch house. Ledger's understated acting is superb, but in the scene he is virtually silent. How do you write a music drama about a character who's inherently so inexpressive and undramatic as Ennis?

So far no libretto has been completed for Wuorinen's project. The composer must decide what his relationship to Santaolalla's music will be, but the writer of a libretto will have to decide how to respond to both the story and the screenplay. The film has an outstanding screenplay, in which Larry McMurtry and Diana Osanna perceptively and subtlely adapted and expanded Annie Proulx's brilliant story. They treated her work with great respect, for the most part only adding sections that developed the implications of what Proulx had written, as in their development of Alma and her daughters and Lureen and her family. As those who've read about the making of the film are aware, when it was shot some episodes not in the story, particularly one involving Ennis and Jack assisting a group of hippies whose van gets stuck, wisely were dropped. Some have criticized the movie for not presenting more scenes depicting the love between Jack and Ennis, though it does have the courage to affirm the directness of the story's depiction of their sexual relationship in several important scenes, one of which-- their second night together in the tent-- is original to the film. Others have noted that one of the sources of the power of the story is Proulx's use of a frame at the beginning and end, describing Ennis's thoughts about Jack some months after Jack's murder; she implicitly presents her account of the love between Ennis and Jack as Ennis's nostalgic recollection, and this quality is lost in the film, since it presents the story in simple chronological sequence, beginning in 1963. Writing the libretto provides the opportunity to respond to such criticisms, but does pose the danger of expanding or changing the narrative in ways that may not work. Also, though one of the richest aspects of the story is Proulx's extraordinary ear for the Western vernacular, and the filmmakers bring this to the screen effectively in the dialogue, you have to wonder how the ungrammatical, earthy, pungent, vivid language of the characters will sound when it's sung.

An opera performance, of course, is very different from a film. The filmmakers show much of what goes on between Ennis and Jack, and their families as well, through close-ups rather than through dialogue. Fortunately, all of the actors are gifted, and succeed effectively, often eloquently, in presenting what their characters feel and think through looks, gestures, posture, and expressions. For those who liked the film, so many moments stay in the mind: the way Jake Gyllenhaal sits and concentrates on peeling potatoes by the campfire, resolutely not looking, but entirely aware, as Ledger washes, naked, behind him; the way Ledger's face becomes more relaxed and open, expressing Ennis's attraction to his friend, and then how severe and closed it becomes when they part at the end of their summer together; the look of mingled fear and dying hope in Gyllenhaal's beautiful eyes as Ennis dismisses him… The movie shows rather than tells. But there are no close-ups in an opera. It takes place on a stage far away from the audience, and the performers must signal what their characters feel and think through big gestures and powerful singing in order to reach those watching and listening. There's little possibility of the kind of quiet, subtle intensity that distinguishes the movie. Indeed, opera often requires considerable resolve on the part of the audience in suspending disbelief, particularly depending on who the performers are; even though certain opera stars may have great voices and histrionic ability, it can be challenging for some viewers to believe that they are the delicate maidens and athletic heroes they're meant to portray. Those who watch video recordings of opera sometimes wish that those operating the cameras would recognize this, and avoid close-ups in an art whose performers are meant to be seen from far away.

               Gay opera fan sites on the internet are full of speculation about what Wuorinen's opera may be like and who might be cast. Clearly the principals need to be right in age, appearance, acting ability, and, perhaps most important, the apparent chemistry between their characters. Many seem to perceive Ennis as a baritone, and Jack as a tenor, a discussion that's led to some interesting speculation about whether baritones should be thought of as "tops" and tenors as "bottoms." Names that have been mentioned (with enthusiastic acclamation by various fans) are those of Stephen Costello, Nathan Gunn, Scott Hendricks, and Norman Reinhardt. Not surprisingly, there continues to be discussion of the rumor that Hugh Jackman and James Marsden might be cast, though neither is an opera singer. Perhaps this isn't as far-fetched as it may seem. Jackman has substantial successful experience in stage performance in musicals, including his role as Curley in the London production of Oklahoma!, and was acclaimed for his portrayal on Broadway of fellow Australian Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz, for which he won a Tony Award. Not only can he sing, but he also seems quite capable of playing a role a lot gayer than either Ennis or Jack. (It's a little scary to think of what Jack and especially Ennis might have thought of Peter Allen.) Marsden-- a former Versace model-- has played gay characters in two movies, Heights, with Jesse Bradford, and The 24^th Day, with Scott Speedman. Marsden's also worked with Jackman in the three X-men films, playing cool, leather-clad Cyclops to Jackman's lupinely hirsute Wolverine. And he can sing, as demonstrated in his performance as Corny Collins in Hairspray. Still, it's quite a ways from a John Waters musical to the opera house. Nonetheless, the speculation and anticipation continue. At least for all the fans of the X-men comics and movies who perceive a gay subtext in the stories about misunderstood mutants with special powers, it's gratifying to imagine Cyclops and Wolverine finally locked in each other's arms. And Jackman and Marsden certainly would look good in cowboy hats and jeans. Or out of them.

The United States has great opera companies and American composers have contributed to an impressive list of varied and distinctively American operas: Scott Joplin's Treemonisha, George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, Howard Hanson's Merrymount, Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe, Carlisle Floyd's Susannah, Virgil Thomson's The Mother of Us All, Aaron Copeland's The Tender Land, Gian Carlo Menotti's The Saint of Bleeker Street, John Adams's Nixon in China, Phillip Glass's Einstein on the Beach, to name just a few. With Brokeback Mountain Charles Wuorinen has the opportunity to contribute another, and to address the subject of love between men, a theme that's been marginalized in too many areas of artistic expression for far too long. It's high time for a great American opera about men who love men, especially considering the number of gay opera fans. So we'll have to wait and see-- and listen.

Eric Patterson is associate professor of American studies and American literature at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He is the author of an upcoming book On Brokeback Mountain: Meditations about Masculinity, Fear, and Love in the Story and the Film.