OPERA
MONDAY, JUNE 4
7:30 PM

Charles Wuorinen:  Brokeback Mountain
New York City Opera
Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center
10 Columbus Circle, Upper West Side, Manhattan

$10-$150
https://nycopera.com/brokeback-mountain/

Uptown Academic Modernist Charles Wourinen isn't a guy you'd normally go to for sentiment.  So his decision to set Annie Proulx's famous short story (also of course made into a famous movie) seemed like it might be more evidence of the détente-moving-to-an-entente between Uptown and Downtown.   In the event, though, the dense complexity of the music prevents both narrative thrust and emotional engagement; and the music is too urban and sophisticated in affect for the unsophisticated rural milieu the opera seeks to portray.  How could you see a dramatization of this story and not be moved?  Now we know.  (This is not an inherent problem with dodecaphony, BTW -- as Berg showed in Wozzeck.)  I saw a lot of opera last week, and Clara Latham’s new opera and thingNY/Varispeed's double bill at Roulette both wiped the floor with this effort.  Very good performances, though.

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT:  Gabriel's is a good illustration of The March Of Time as it affects restaurants.  When the place opened 25 or so years ago, it was still fairly uncommon to find Italian-Italian restaurants in New York (as opposed to the then-prevalent "Red Sauce" Italian-American, now undergoing a quasi-ironic revival).  So the place had a certain cachet.  Now the City is overriden with such restaurants, and Gabriel's is nothing more than a good reliable place to eat.  That can be enough, though.