CityLife

MIF: Rufus Wainwright's Prima Donna - opera with pizzazz

Rufus, left, in rehearsal for Prima Donna

IF you’re lucky enough to have a ticket for the world premiere of Rufus Wainwright’s first opera Prima Donna, then you needn’t feel too worried about being able to spot the openly-gay pop star in the audience.
 

“My boyfriend and I will be coming to the first night dressed as Verdi and Puccini,” he chuckles.

“Opera needs a bit more of that sort of pizzazz, I think! Of course, I won’t be singing onstage but I couldn’t bear not to be noticed!”
 

Rufus has been in Manchester for a while now putting the finishing touches to the production, which is part of the Manchester International Festival.
 

Long-cherished project

Prima Donna, about an opera singer preparing for her return to the stage in Paris after a six-year absence, is a long-cherished project for the flamboyant singer-songwriter.

Sung in French (“there’ll be surtitles, but if you know any French at all, it shouldn’t be that hard to understand anyway”, he insists), the concept has echoes of 2007’s Monkey: Journey To The West, which was composed by Blur’s Damon Albarn.

Even though it was performed entirely in Mandarin, the show was the runaway hit of the inaugural MIF and has since toured the world. 
 

“Compared to that French is pretty conventional!” observes Rufus.
 

Real beauty

“Rufus is an artist who’s been obviously bursting out of the constraints of the three-minute pop song and this opera is going to be a thing of real beauty,” believes MIF boss Alex Poots.
 

“I’m excited to be able to discover the city and, judging by this festival and what they’re letting me do, Manchester is an exciting, adventurous and enthusiastic place,” says Rufus.

He admits that, even so, there were times during the run-up to the production “when I was positive I just wanted to go back to New York and forget about the whole thing!
 

“You know, I knew going into this what an intense, fraught and revealing process it was going to be but, once I was in it, I was completely shocked by how intense, fraught and revealing an experience it turned out to be!

Giving birth

But now everything is in place, all the balances, are right, the costumes look fabulous and my faith is renewed.”
 

Prima Donna will be performed by the orchestra of the Leeds-based Opera North and directed by Daniel Kramer, with soprano Janis Kelly in the lead role, Madame.
 

“Writing the work and then having to hand it over to other people to perform has,” admits Rufus, “been as traumatic as giving birth and then having to give up that child into what could either be a loving environment or a pack of wolves.

''I’m going to take a few months off to zen out a bit and then my next project is going to be an album of just solo piano and voice.”
 

Maria Callas

Before that, though, Prima Donna is already booked to go to London, Toronto and Melbourne. “Yeah, it’s like the Commonwealth opera tour,” he quips.
 

“I’d been thinking for years and years and years about writing an opera but I could never quite find a subject that I could handle,” Rufus recalls.
 

“One day, I was watching interviews with Maria Callas and instantly this idea for an opera about an opera singer kind of fell into my lap. I want to make it clear that this is not an opera about Maria Callas, although she is in there. It’s more about diva qualities. 
 

“A week later, completely by chance, I got a call from Peter Gelb at the New York Metropolitan Opera who’d heard that I liked opera and asked if I had any projects I was thinking of.
 

Writing it in French

“The idea was so fresh and new at the time that he immediately went with that. But it gradually became obvious that with that sort of size of machine I wasn’t going to see any results until at least 2014.

''That was the first issue and so was the fact that I was writing it in French. I had to get it out and I had to keep it in French so we came to the end of that road.”
 

 Why was he so insistent that it needed to be in French, I wondered.
 

“At first I’d intended to shift it into English, but it just kept coming fast and furious in that language so I decided to keep it that way.

''There are certain operas I like in English and quite a few I don’t. On the other hand, opera always works in French. For my first opera, I wanted to be sure it was going to work. Now I am.”
 

Prima Donna is at the Palace Theatre on Friday July 10, Tuesday 14 and Friday 17 at 7.45pm; also Sunday 12 and 19 at 3pm.