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Month in and month out, medici.tv takes music lovers to one-of-a-kind concert happenings around the world - the next best thing to being there. The next great medici.tv experience is tomorrow, Friday, February 7, at 2pm Est, with the live webcast of Charles Wuorinen's opera Brokeback Mountain, in its much-anticipated premiere production at Madrid's Teatro Real. Wuorinen, the 75-year-old composer who has both a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur 'genius' grant to his credit, based his opera on the short story of the same name by fellow Pulitzer-winner Annie Proulx, who also penned the libretto her first. The heartbreaking story of a complex emotional-sexual relationship between two Wyoming cowboys over 20 years starting in 1963 earned wide renown in Ang Lee's 2005 film version, which won three Academy Awards among many other international prizes. The New York Times first-night review of the Madrid production called Wuorinen's opera 'a serious work, an impressive achievement,...

Opera has always been a reflection of the cultural zeitgeist of Western society. Historical events, popular stories, real people—they’ve all inspired musicalizations which allow patrons to connect directly with cultural moments in artistic ways.

But while opera may have stopped being the most popular art form, it never stopped being a relevant one. Hats off to the contemporary composers who continue to devote themselves to breathing life into the art form (because if they don’t, who will?). Opera is an endangered species, much like pandas or stenographers, and it continues to thrive creatively by reflecting the pop culture moments—movies,...