Rufus Wainwright returns home to Montreal (All photos courtesy Festival International de Jazz de Montréal) |
Elton John once famously said Rufus Wainwright is the best songwriter
alive. And for a while there, in the media, Rufus could do no wrong. His
eponymously-titled 1998 debut album was named one of the best albums of the
year by Rolling Stone, and he was the toast of the town everywhere he went,
especially when he returned home to Montreal.
Elton John once famously said Rufus Wainwright is the best
songwriter alive. And for a while there, in the media, Rufus could do no wrong.
His eponymously-titled 1998 debut album was named one of the best albums of the
year by Rolling Stone, and he was the toast of the town everywhere he went,
especially when he returned home to Montreal.
But as fast as the media builds up celebrities, it is also quick
to tear them down. So it was no surprise the claws were out when Wainwright’s
first-ever opera Prima Donna debuted at the Manchester International Festival
in July 2009. Wrote Warwick Thompson of Bloomberg, “There were tears of joy in
Rufus Wainwright’s eyes when he took his bow after the world premiere of his
opera… There were some in mine too, though the joy sprang more from relief that
it was over.”
But Wainwright soldiered on. Prima Donna made its North
American debut at Toronto’s Elgin Theatre at the Luminato Festival and won a
Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Musical/Opera in 2011, before being
famously mounted the following year by the New York City Opera, with red-carpet
friends Yoko Ono and Anjelica Houston in attendance – a fascinating turn of events
since Prima Donna was originally commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera until a
dispute over Wainwright’s decision to write the libretto in French led to an
acrimonious split.
Most of all, Wainwright wanted Prima Donna to play in
Montreal. This summer, eight years after its debut in Manchester, Wainwright
will get his wish when Prima Donna will be performed at the Festival
International de Jazz de Montréal.“It’s been a long and winding road to
Montreal with Prima Donna ,” says Wainwright. “Having it performed in Montreal,
especially at Salle Wilfred-Pelletier where I grew up going to the opera, is
coming full circle in so many ways. I am also excited to be working with the
great (Québécois) soprano Lyne Fortin, one of the first opera singers I ever
saw perform, in La Bohème. I wish sometimes that Montreal had been more at the
forefront with this project, but Montreal – and this is why I love this city –
it is one of the great bohemian capitals and one of their traits is they like
to be fashionably late. So this is exciting and it means a lot.”