Opera Composers Look to Best-Selling Books, Popular Movies for Inspiration

A list of opera premières scheduled over the next few years reads like a list of bestselling books or popular movies: Brokeback Mountain, Dolores Claiborne, Cold Mountain, The Shining, The Manchurian Candidate. Apparently, opera composers are looking to the bestseller shelves for subjects that have a great deal of relevance to modern listeners.

Brokeback Mountain, the story of the doomed relationship between two cowboys, will be premièred by Madrid's Teatro Real in January 2014. The opera, with music by Charles Wuorinen and libretto by Annie Proulx, is based on a short story by Proulx. More people are probably familiar with the Oscar-winning film made in 2005, starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.

The Minnesota Opera's New Works Initiative has resulted in a string of new operas, the most recent being Doubt, based on the 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning play and 2008 film by John Patrick Shanley. The operatic version, with music by Douglas Cuomo, was premièred earlier this year.

Future operas in the New Works Initiative series include The Shining, a horror opera discussed in a recent Classicalite article. This opera is based on the 1977 novel by Stephen King, and features music by Paul Moravec. The operatic version, one of the few true horror operas, will be premièred in 2016.

The San Francisco Opera is currently presenting an opera based on another Stephen King novel, Dolores Claiborne, with music by Tobias Picker. Dolores Claiborne is a psychological thriller that was turned into a 1995 movie starring Kathy Bates.

The Minnesota Opera will also première The Manchurian Candidate in 2015, a political thriller set to music by Kevin Puts. The opera is based on the 1959 best-selling novel by Richard Condon, which describes a Communist conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government. The book inspired a famous film version in 1962, which was remade in 2004.

The Santa Fe Opera announces the première of Cold Mountain, an opera by Jennifer Higdon, during their 2015 season. This opera is based on the 1997 bestselling novel of the same name by Charles Frazier. Cold Mountain is the story of W. P. Inman, a soldier who deserts the Confederate army as the war is coming to an end and goes on a long journey back to his home on Cold Mountain.