On the Edge: Rufus Wainwright

Go to Photo Album (Photographs © Jeremy Nussbaum)

"Awwww" is the sound and awe is the state when a tried-n-true interviewer (that would be me) gets to talk to a cultural icon and personal hero; and so it was in Sag Harbor this past Thursday August 18th when BookHampton's guest speaker was acclaimed singer and composer Rufus Wainwright.

Rufus, whose charm is such that one has to call him by his first name, came to speak about opera as part of our ongoing On The Edge Series. His newest work is a full-length opera, Prima Donna. It was hailed by the London Times as "more than an opera, it is rather a love song  to opera. A work that recognizes the great tradition and full Romantic sound of the late-nineteeth and early-twentieth century composers."

Rufus  explained that he took the occasion of this major work, which tells the story of an opera diva and a hapless journalist, to bring to bear everything that he  loves in music. "I love opera," Rufus told the full-house audience. "I heard Verdi's Requiem when I was a little boy, maybe ten, and suddenly I just knew."  

Growing up in a house filled with music, Rufus nonetheless had to cut his own path. He was enchanted by the sound of opera, the enormity of the orchestra and the personal connection of each singer's voice. "I didn't have to understand what they were saying," he said,"I knew what they were saying."

His love of opera carried him through the Italians, and Verdi in particular, to Richard Strauss, whose Der Rosenkavalier is for him the quintessential opera experience. With Rosenkavalier in mind, he told a lovely story of being a boy and bringing a silver rose (from the jewelry store) to his beloved mom, Kate McGarrigle.

Rufus said that he went to McGill University in Canada to study music, only to be told that he could not participate in the opera program if he were going to wear clogs. Rufus, being Rufus, opted to keep the footgear and leave the school. He went on to study more on his own, and at the same time expand his performance repertoire. He noted that music and opera should be melodic and he is adamantly opposed to the “modernist school” of music which often teaches music as a mathematical or constructive theory.

 The influence of classical music, Rufus said, has been there all along; and his commitment to opera brings him at this very successful stage of his own career to an enormous and challenging opportunity.  

Rather than go the route of many contemporary composers, Rufus told the audience, many of whom  were themselves well versed in classical music, that he had indeed orchestrated Prima Donna himself. The labor — as he said, “thousands of unpaid hours” — was a true labor of love.

A member of the audience asked where Rufus places himself in the pantheon of opera greats. "It's an interesting question," he replied, smiling. "There is no way that I could say that I am going to be Mahler or Mozart. But no one is. And — if this is not misunderstood — they would not have been me. The truth is that each of us must compose and create the very best that we can, bring what we know and learn, and use what we have to give. So I see it like this: Mozart, Wagner, Mahler, they built the cathedral of music, so high and  beautiful; and I flew in there and got to place my small nest up way up there in the rafters of their beautiful cathedral."

Rufus Wainwright, who has created a unique sound in rock, dance, film and theater has now added opera to his musical portfolio: Prima Donna will have its U.S. premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in Winter 2012.

— Charline Spektor

The DVD The Making of Rufus Wainwright's Prima Donna is available at www.bookhampton.com, as is the complete discography of his work, House of Rufus.

Photographs © Jeremy Nussbaum