Brokeback Mountain to Premiere as Opera in 2013

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.

Brokeback Mountain is a cowboy romance about two ranch-hand buddies who start an affair when they meet on the fictional mountain in 1963. (AP)