Rufus Wainwright's debut opera, 'Prima Donna,' opens to mixed reviews
You will recall that singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright was invited by the Metropolitan Opera, no less, to compose a work for the company, but the project hit a snag. The Met announced that Wainwright's insistence on writing Prima Donna, his first opera, in French, rather than English, was unacceptable, so the deal was off. My sources tell me a different tale, for what it's worth -- that Met officials listened to some of the score at an early stage in the creative process and found it ever so slightly wanting.
Whatever the full story (as Tony Tommasini points out, if the Met can produce an opera by American composer Philip Glass sung in Sanskrit, it seems odd to reject an opera by a Canadian-American composer sung in French), Wainwright was hardly deterred. His opera, which tells a Norma Desmond-like tale of a troubled, aging diva named Regine and her effort to start singing again after a long silence, was quickly snapped up by ...
the Manchester International Festival, where it was premiered over the weekend. The reviews that I've spotted are, unsurprisingly, mixed. One thing that was a clear hit, I gather -- Wainwright's provocative arrival at the theater, dressed as one of opera's greatest composers.
Here's a sample of the reactions:
THE GUARDIAN/ALFRED HICKLING
The first thing to point out is that this is no mere rock star's vanity project, though few stars are quite as vain as Wainwright, who swans to his seat in the stalls sporting a top hat and silver-topped cane, having apparently decided that the best way to announce himself as an opera composer is to grow a beard and dress up as Verdi.
The score itself comes clothed as Strauss, Massenet and Puccini; Wainwright would seem to be on a mission to drag opera back into the late 19th century. But his gift as a melodist and an orchestrator are in no doubt, having been proved on a series of albums which are mini-operas in their own right.
NEW YORK TIMES/ANTHONY TOMMASINI
As a longtime admirer of his music, I wish I could report that Prima Donna fulfilled his ambitions for writing a fresh and personal new opera. He certainly brings deep talents and potential to the challenge ... There are inspired touches and disarmingly beautiful passages in this mysterious, stylistically eclectic work ... But Mr. Wainwright’s score and his attitude toward the drama often seem muddled, as if he were relying too much on his keen musical and theatrical instincts lest he overthink and impede his imagination ...
In his songs Mr. Wainwright will evoke Hollywood strings, a hint of Carmen or a brass band, and the listener goes along for the stylistic ride. But in an opera of some two and a half hours the extended passages in sundry styles make you wonder what is going on. Is it ironic? Cavalier? Intentionally maudlin?
Some of the most captivating moments are the simplest musically ... The opera ends with a tender aria for Régine, a long-spun melody with a gentle accompaniment riff: in other words, a Wainwright song. Would that there had been more of them.
THE INDEPENDENT/LYNNE WALKER
[T]his flimsy plot is spun out into a cheesy piece of full-length music theatre. The only surprise was that Wainwright didn't create a part for himself, the primo uomo having made a grand entrance into the theatre dressed up as Verdi, with a beard grown for the occasion, his companion making a remarkably realistic Puccini. The buzz was palpable before the curtain rose. Flanked by his sister Martha and mother Kate McGarrigle, Wainwright, basking in flash photography, seemed in no doubt as to who was the star of this show ...
Musically, Prima Donna is at best banal, at worst boring. The orchestral writing is lumpy, leaden and repetitive, so that the merest flash of inspiration – a dashing musical signature for example – is welcomed with relief as an original idea. Wainwright didn't need to pay homage to all those dead composers he adores by including so many fragments of their scores in his own opera.
Comments
Verdi indeed! That's hysterical.
The Met's "excuse" is exactly that (and rather poorly-veiled, to boot; obviously, they make decisions -- getting both in _and_ out of this mess -- almost as competently as the ol' corporate wags at GM). Considering the gamut of tongues which are projected from the Met's stage, they obviously wanted to make their "reasoning" as obvious a lie as is possible.
As for Hickling's comment, "Wainwright would seem to be on a mission to drag opera back into the late 19th century" -- _what_, exactly, is the _negative_ aspect of trying to do so??? I think "modern" opera desperately _needs_ to be dragged back to that time -- full speed ahead!!! (Not that I'm saying Wainwright is the man to do it -- ahem, nyet!) I mean, is Hickling complaining that we shouldn't be writing music which would compare favourably with the absolute GOLDEN AGE of the art?
(By the by, since you invoked "Satyagraha," the "Evening Song" which closes Glass' opera is one of the most beautiful things in all of music! :^)
(Couldn't agree with you more -- about the end of 'Satyagraha.')TIM
Posted by: Doug Halfen | July 13, 2009 11:42 AM
It's interesting to note that Lynne Walker's amateurish, and decidedly bitter review, was taken to task by none other than Dr Jonathan Miller. And in the world of opera I know who's opinion I would choose to respect.
Interesting, indeed. TIM
Posted by: Grazie | July 13, 2009 1:24 PM
Mr. Halfen, the problem with "dragging opera back to the 19th century" is very simple: sitting in an opera house in 2009 and hearing something that sounds like Werther is to make the art form a pastiche, a second-hand memory. I don't know about you, but when I pay large-ish sums of money to hear a new piece of music, I don't want to spend my time playing "Spot the opera that the composer ripped off".
Plus, for some of us, opera *starts* with Pelleas et Melisande (1902), so we have no sympathy for a 19th century-centric compositional stance.
I'm not saying that Mr. Wainwright should aim to sound like Birtwistle's glorious The Mask of Orpheus, Reimann's awesome Lear or even Saariaho's ravishing L'amour de Loin, but really, sounding like Puccini in 2009 is so......tired.
Why should I take Jonathan "Object of Mockery In the Opera World" Miller seriously, when his first comment is about the orchestration? Wainwright had two assistants helping him, he wasn't Strauss orchestrating Die Frau Ohne Schatten at Garmisch.
This response is miles better than Miller's bitchiness:
Oh my. Why does it take "bravery" to commission "classical music" from yet another unskilled glamorous pop star? Beside the fact that Mr. Wainwright is completely unknown to the "person in the street" the bigger question is; why do opera companies avoid commissioning trained composers?
Simple: because selling people on anything besides Mozart, Wagner, Puccini and Verdi is hard and it's a way to claim "See! we're presenting new work!" without presenting anything that would scare people who think opera died with Verdi.
I love England, been there 8 times, but good god, the class system infests even responses to an opera review. So, Lynn Walker is "an elite" and "a snob" because she didn't like Rufus "Peaked with his first album" Wainwright's opera? Lordy.
Thanks for the very effective (and entertaining) analysis. TIM
Posted by: Henry Holland | July 14, 2009 2:38 PM
Grazie said it better than I ever could. What possible artistic sense or sense in any other sense of the word does it make to write a piece of musical theatre a la 19th century at the end of the first decade of the 21st century? About as much sense as it does to write a libretto about a virginal maiden whose uncle objects to her boyfriend. None.
I tend to think opera ended where Grazie says it began. Just kidding - sort of. But when I do go to listen to contemporary music, I expect it to be, well, contemporary.
Then again, someone one said there's still a lot of good music to be written in C major. I think it all depends on the substance and imagination of the result. That said, you make great points. (But I think you meant to say you agreed with Henry, not Grazie.) Thanks for posting. TIM
Posted by: donald | July 15, 2009 2:07 AM
It's not so much that writing melodic, tonally centered music is "dated" (Dove does this magnificently and quite successfully in his operas - works which are hardly "dated"), but that obviously "borrowing" idiosyncratic stylistic nuances from Verdi, Puccini, et. al., rather than finding one's own style, seems to be the critics' point. But, considering that this is Wainwright's first opera, perhaps we can cut him some slack (Verdi borrowed heavily from Donizetti and Bellini in his first two operas, Wagner borrowed heavily from Weber and Marschner in "Feen" and from Bellini in "Liebesverbot"). Personally, I'm curious to hear the work, although it will probably take a passage into obscurity. I hope Wainwright listens to his critics and tries again. By the way, I believe it was Schoenberg (of all people!) who said that there was still a lot of great music to be written in C Major. Tonality didn't die in the 20th century, it just became dormant - luckily it's waking up and many composers are seeing it as a viable alternative; although it should remain just that - an alternative - we musn't forget the progress that was made in the previous century.
Thanks for the engaging comments, and for reminding me that it was Schoenberg who said the C major line (I was too lazy that day to look it up). TIM
Posted by: Charlie Richards | July 16, 2009 12:57 AM