DG Will Release Rufus Wainwright Opera "Prima Donna"

The 2-CD set will be available September 11, 2015.
Pre-order your copy here.

"Prima Donna is an opera composed by Canadian-American singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright to a French language libretto which he co-authored with Bernadette Colomine. It is about 'a day in the life of an aging opera singer,' anxiously preparing for her comeback in 1970s Paris, who falls in love with a journalist. It premiered at the Palace Theatre, Manchester on July 10, 2009 during the Manchester International Festival. The U.S. premiere was presented by New York City Opera at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on February 19, 2012. In March 2014, Wainwright began raising funds via PledgeMusic to record a two-disc album recording of the opera."...."It is vitally important to me that Prima Donna be properly recorded and released so that I can tour a concert version of it in the coming year, and I have decided to do this with the help of both PledgeMusic and the incredible BBC Symphony Orchestra which in turn requires your generous support. Quality studio opera recordings are extremely expensive and too time consuming to pull off these days, and it seems that a once vibrant recording industry is no longer what it was and new methods are needed to get the music out. Though sad, the upside is that everyone in the field agrees that this is a great time to bring the audience into the wonders of the creative process and the myriad of stages the recording of an opera requires. Exciting rehearsals, deep conversations, strange and colorful characters, not to mention many a silly moment, all of this I’m truly excited to experience with you until that glorious moment when the conductor, myself the composer, the orchestra, the singers and the recording crew turn on the red light and put down for posterity my first magnum opus, Prima Donna." [Source, Source] Watch a video interview with Rufus Wainwright discussing how he came up with the concept, as well as footage from the BAM performances, after the jump.

Composer Rufus Wainwright's Prima Donna was inspired by an interview he saw of Maria Callas. 

Deborah Voigt Joins Rufus Wainwright For BBC Proms Performance

Operatic soprano Deborah Voigt joined pop star Rufus Wainwright at the 2014 BBC Proms. Watch the two sing "If I Loved You" from the musical Carousel and Ms. Voigt sing "Quand j'étais jeune étudiante" from Wainwright's opera Prima Donna, after the jump.

Rufus Wainwright Tells Rolling Stone He's Ready For BAM

Rebecca Bottone (l) and Janis Kelly (r) in Prima Donna at the Manchester International Festival

You have have an opera, Prima Donna, that's about to open in New York.
Yeah, that’s premiering in February at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It's very, very exciting – it’s part of the New York City Opera season. The opera was supposed to be here years ago, and it had to kind of travel the world in order to return home. So it’s a homecoming of that work. Opera has always been kind of my ace in the hole. I was converted to the form when I was a teenager. So I always had that in the background. But I didn’t want to be a classic musician, necessarily. So I just sort of take those influences and infused them into my songwriting. But I knew, down the line, that I'd want to return back to that form, as sort of musical sacrifice for all the beauty that it’s given me over the years. I’ve hopefully done that with Prima Donna.

William Joyner and Janis Kelly

When did you know it was the right time to take on the opera? I'd been thinking of an idea for a long time. And I was actually expecting it to be a much later kind of conquest in my life. I thought maybe in my fifties or something. As it is with many theatrical endeavors, this story just fell in my lap – of the day in the life of an opera singer – and these characters just instantly, miraculously appeared in my imagination and needed to come to life. I think a lot of playwrights or opera writers – you’re sort of summoned by the work itself. It’s not really you that goes out looking for it. [Source]

(Photos: Clive Barda)