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NEWSMAKERS by Richard Burnett
Our Enfants terribles
Over the last decade I’ve interviewed Rufus Wainwright 19 times – more
than I've interviewed anyone else – and if we do the interview in person,
it’s usually at his favourite Montreal café, La Croissanterie Figaro on
Rue Hutchison.
Otherwise it’s over the phone, like the time Rufus was standing in line
at Heathrow airport telling me about meeting Burt Bacharach who, like
Rufus, also studied music at McGill University.
Or our interview earlier this summer, when Rufus was sitting in his car
at a beach in Long Island.
“Nineteen already?” Rufus says.
Of course, Rufus loves the media. He enjoys fame. And the media
mostly love him back. But for the first time in his career he took a few
hits when he debuted his first-ever opera, Prima Donna, budgeted at
£2-million, at the Manchester International Festival on July 10.
«There was a lot of very bad stuff going on and I immediately
realized at one point it wasn’t me,” Rufus recalled.
“So I said, ‘I’m going to leave,’ and I very dramatically announced
to the orgy, ‘I am going back to society and I want
to live.’ I went out and then I got about a block away and I
realized I had forgotten my wallet and I had to go back!
That was so pathetic. »
144 oct. 2009 fugues.com
Lynne Walker of The Independent
complained, “Musically Prima
Donna is at best banal, at worst
boring.”
Warwick Thompson of Bloomberg
wrote, “There were tears of joy in
Rufus Wainwright’s eyes when he
took his bow after the world premiere
of his opera Prima Donna...
There were some in mine too,
though the joy sprang more from
relief that it was over.”
Alfred Hickling of The Guardian
wrote that “this is no mere rock
star’s vanity project, though few
stars are quite as vain as Wainwright.”
If anything, Rufus is audacious.
But there were also some positive
notes. “Inspired touches and disarmingly
beautiful passages,” The
New York Times reviewed. And The
Globe and Mail noted, “There’s no
shortage of emotion in Prima
Donna, as you might expect from
the first opera by Rufus Wainwright,
who does nothing by halfnotes.
Strings soar, teeth are
gnashed, heroines throw themselves
across beds.”
Rufus took it all in sanguinely.
“I’m relieved that [the public reception]
was kind of positive,”
Rufus says. “It wasn’t my masterpiece.
I didn’t shatter the opera
world but the definite consensus
was that it was a really strong attempt.
I made a mark, which is a
lot in the classical world. I’m also
happy that my mother was there
to see it.”
Not only was his mother, Montreal
folk singer Kate McGarrigle, there
on opening night, but so was
Rufus’s boyfriend, German theater
director Jorn Weisbrodt. Rufus arrived
dressed as Verdi in a formal
19th-century black suit with white
silk scarf and black top hat, and
Jorn was a young Puccini in a
cream-coloured summer suit and
straw hat.
“It was my idea,” Rufus says.
“[And] it was a very good idea. It
fanned the flames of the press.
Like they say, no press is bad
press. So it was fun and we looked
great.”
But underneath it all Rufus admits
Photo : RRoberrt Laalliberrté