‘Brokeback Mountain’ to become opera in NYC

Show based on Annie Proulx story is scheduled to premiere in spring 2013

Slide show

Image: Actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie

Celeb sightings
Jolie and Pitt back in the USA, Miley jumps for joy at Sweet 16th, the Boss backs Obama and more.

more photos

Special feature

Movie night eats
Pass on the popcorn and pair your fave film — whether it's "The Departed" or "Driving Miss Daisy" — with foods it inspires.

Slide show

Portraits from Vanity Fair
See iconic images of 20th-century figures such as Clint Eastwood, Amelia Earhart, Greta Garbo and more.

more photos

updated 2:39 p.m. ET June 8, 2008

NEW YORK - The New York City Opera commissioned Charles Wuorinen to compose an opera based on “Brokeback Mountain,” the 1997 short story by Annie Proulx that became the basis for a 2005 movie that won three Academy Awards.

The opera is scheduled to premiere in spring 2013, City Opera said Sunday. It will be City Opera’s second Wuorinen premiere, following “Haroun and the Sea of Stories,” which was based on a Salman Rushdie novel and opened in October 2004.

“Ever since encountering Annie Proulx’s extraordinary story I have wanted to make an opera on it, and it gives me great joy that Gerard Mortier and New York City Opera have given me the opportunity to do so,” Wuorinen said in a statement.

Story continues below ↓

“Brokeback Mountain” is a cowboy romance about two ranch-hand buddies who start a homosexual affair when they meet on the fictional mountain in 1963.