NEW York City Opera has commissioned Charles Wuorinen, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, to turn Brokeback Mountain into an opera. The drama of two cowboys falling in love originated in a short story by Annie Proulx, which was the basis for Ang Lee's 2005 film starring Jake Gyllenhaal and the late Heath Ledger. It won three Oscars.
Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli is working on an opera based on An Inconvenient Truth, the Oscar-winning global warming documentary, to be staged at La Scala in Milan. Battistelli says that his opera will deal with "the tragedy of the present situation" and that Al Gore will be a figure in the story.
And David Cronenberg is directing an opera based on his most accomplished 1986 movie, The Fly, which opens at Théatre du Chatalet in Paris next month and will be staged in Los Angeles in September. The composer is Howard Shore, who wrote the music for Cronenberg's film.
Colin finds a lady in the water
Neil Jordan has chosen Alicja Bachleda to play the title role in his new movie, which starts shooting in west Cork next month. Ondine stars Colin Farrell as a fisherman who hauls up a young woman (Bachleda) in one of his nets. Ondine is a mythological sea nymph, and theories about her origins spread as she transforms the lives of the fisherman and his neighbours in the southwest of Ireland.
Born in Mexico, Bachleda (25) was raised in Poland, where she began her performing career as a singer when she was six. Her films include two for rising German director Marco Kreuzpaintner, Summer Storm and Trade.
Resistance is preferable
Dublin's new Light House Cinema presents a preview of factually based wartime drama Female Agents/Les Femmes de l'Ombre at 6.30pm next Wednesday, followed by a discussion with its director, Jean-Paul Salomé, and Déborah François, who plays one of the women working undercover in the French Resistance. François, incidentally, has been nominated for a César for her fine performances in L'Enfant and The Page Turner. www.lighthouse cinema.ie
Mamma Meryl, here I go again
Is there no limit to the versatility of Meryl Streep? The WGLA (World's Greatest Living Actress) will demonstrate her singing prowess in Mamma Mia!, which opens here on July 11th. And she could well collect her 15th Oscar nomination for Doubt, due for US release in the autumn.
Directed by John Patrick Shanley, Doubt is based on his Broadway stage play which won four Tony awards. Streep plays a nun who suspects a Catholic priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) of molesting a student.
Doubt also stars Amy Adams, who is working with Streep again on Nora Ephron's Julie and Julia, which is now in production. The WGLA plays one of the first US celebrity chefs, Julia Child, with Adams as Julie Powell, who wrote the book on which the film is based. It follows the year when Powell, bored with life as an office temp, dedicated herself to following every recipe in Child's book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
The LA connection
The inaugural Los Angeles Irish Film festival is scheduled for October 2nd to 5th. The advisory board includes Neil Jordan, Jim Sheridan and Mary McGuckian.
This silent is golden
The 1923 silent classic The Hunchback of Notre Dame, starring the great Lon Chaney as Quasimodo, will be screened at Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin next Friday night, as the opening event in the Pipeworks Organ Festival. David Briggs will perform a soundtrack for the film on the cathedral organ. www.pipeworks.com
mdwyer@irish-times.ie
