The polymath Rufus Wainwright is impossible to dismiss: He writes and sings songs à la Bob Dylan and sings à la Judy Garland, all in his own very musical manner. I recently came across him singing three songs from Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été on YouTube with such flawless intonation and sensitivity that I could soon disregard the fact that his voice was all wrong for the music–clearly a pop sound that he was adapting to the music, microphone necessary. He’s deeply talented. And very ambitious; perhaps too.
A superb musical sense and great knowledge of opera–I have heard him discuss opera and he knows his stuff–does not mean you can write a successful one, as his Prima Donna proves. Begun as a project commissioned for the Met, that organization backed out because Wainwright insisted on the opera being sung in French (heaven knows why). It was premiered in Manchester, England in 2009 to sometimes gentle, sometimes devastating reviews, and this studio recording was made on January 1, 2015.
The opera concerns a not-old, prematurely retired prima donna who ran from the stage six years prior due to something traumatic that occurred that evening; she is convinced that she has lost her voice. So there’s a smidge of Callas here, but more. On Bastille Day, 1970, Regine, Madame Saint-Laurent, chats with her maid, Marie, who is worried that Madame no longer takes care of her appearance. Philippe, Madame’s pushy, prissy, and faithful butler, has convinced her to return to the stage, and a young journalist and longtime fan, André, will soon arrive to interview her. He’s a young smoothie. Blah, blah, and in the second act Madame and André sing a duet from Aliénor d’Aquitaine, the last opera she ever sang on stage, and eventually, after more than two hours, we discover that Madame was having an affair with her leading tenor whom she later caught kissing a young chorister. Hence the trauma. Each of us can think of, and hope for, better traumas. The drama afforded the trauma is overblown, and so is the music.
The problems are several. Only Madame is memorably written either musically or textually (Wainwrght co-wrote the libretto with Benadette Colomine), and the attempt to turn the butler Philippe into a sort of vainglorious Michonnet (from Adriana Lecouvreur) is a failure. Act 1 meanders: Madame’s opening aria has hints of Debussy in the orchestration but moments later the orchestration giganticizes and we get Mascagni and Ravel; the act’s hour duration seems longer and as if Wainwright were trying on the clothing of every Romantic composer, trying to find his size.
In Act 2 things move along, and when the journalist, who happens to be a tenor, sings part of the duet with Madame, we get music that is simply beautiful. Then there is a trio for two sopranos and tenor that is impossible to disconnect from Rosenkavalier. The opera’s closing moments present Madame watching the Bastille Day fireworks from her balcony. The fireworks themselves are dissonant; there’s a soft ostinato below, and the vocal line is lovely as Madame resigns herself. Is it sappy? You bet. Is it a crime? Nah.
Janis Kelly sings and (vocally) acts splendidly as Madame; Kathryn Guthrie, with a voice that sits quite high, makes a pert and lovely Marie, the maid; Richard Morrison displays a fine baritone as the annoying Philippe, and Antonio Figueroa, a fine light tenor, croons his way through the role of André, which requires just that. The BBC Symphony Orchestra plays well under Jayce Ogren, managing to obey Wainwright’s mood swings with ease; indeed, they seem to enjoy the intensely lush, Romantic music for what it is.
Last question: Is the opera a success? The answer is clearly no. I wouldn’t have minded seeing it, but I can hear the word “derivative” in my head throughout. Wainwright came to the Manchester opening dressed as Verdi. Well, so is his opera. Please note that the numerical rating (8 out of 10) connotes the quality of the performance and recording; if I were rating the opera itself, it would wind up at 6. Just for some perspective, that’s the same rating I’d give to Wagner’s Die Feen and Verdi’s Alzira.
