RUFUS WAINWRIGHT Take All My Loves 9 Shakespeare Sonnets

"If music be the food of love, play on,/ Give me excess of it,” commands Duke Orsino in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. And to celebrate today’s 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death, Rufus Wainwright has obliged, decking out a selection of sonnets in a dazzling array of musical genres from high opera, through grungey rock, sweet Seventies pop, minimalist piano ballads, world trance and Berlin cabaret.

Those who have always found the Canadian singer-songwriter’s baroque pop over-egged and theatrical must suspect this is the album which will clinch their argument. Even as a fan, I read the list of contributors with a mixture of excitement and concern: Siân Phillips, Florence Welch, Carrie Fisher, Helena Bonham Carter, Peter Eyre and – yikes! – William Shatner? Had Wainwright boldly gone too far this time?

Not at all. All My Loves turns out to be a box of delights: an album whose constantly shifting moods, romantic melodies and sly twists of musical wit are a perfect fit for the swoons, spite and slick conceits of the poems. The fluidity of gender, age and nationality of the voices delivering the spoken word sections give texture to the sound and universality to the emotions. There’s always something surprising around the corner: at the end, Sonnet 87 is delivered by the 92-year-old East German actress Inge Keller.

Wainwright’s interest in the sonnets dates back more than a decade, when the late composer Michael Kamen commissioned him to score Sonnet 29 (When in Disgrace with Fortune and Men’s Eyes). Director Robert Wilson asked for more music for a 2009 theatre piece, then the San Francisco Symphony called on him to orchestrate five more sonnets, three of which appeared on Wainwright’s 2010 album All Days are Nights: Songs for Lulu. The gorgeous resignation of his take on A Woman’s Face was a stand-out track. As a gay man who once told me he always goes “for straight drug addicts”, he inhabited every line of Sonnet 20, in which the poet laments that since Nature has “prick’d out” a beautiful young man’s body for women’s pleasure, he must settle for friendship.

The song is given two treatments here: early on there’s an elegant, classical delivery by Austrian soprano Anna Prohaska, all that yearning corseted up by the lofty control of her courtly art. It’s then brought up to date in a sighed pop version by Wainwright. Producer Marius de Vries suspends the weary piano and pavement pounding drums in slightly psychedelic synth effects. Shatner’s part is also pretty trippy, while Welch turns in a surprisingly delicate performance on a sugar pop setting of When in Disgrace, which almost turns into ABBA’s Chiquitita towards the end.

De Vries has form with modernising Shakespeare: he worked as a composer and producer on the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. Here he does a great job splicing Wainwright’s restless style shifts into a coherent sonic adventure.

There are a few awkward moments when Wainwright struggles to shoehorn the Shakespeare into the tunes. And others when he over-clutters the music. But he’s so playful, inventive and heartfelt that even though this album clocks in at 55 minutes, he leaves you wanting him to play on and on. (Helen Brown)

BBC Symphony Orchestra / Jayce Ogren RUFUS WAINWRIGHT Prima Donna

 

Dear friends,

We are about to embark on an exciting project which will fulfill a powerful desire of mine – to properly record my first opera, “Prima Donna” with a fabulous orchestra and release a double CD and vinyl of that recording. I would love for you to be a part of this journey as we move through the process and create a magnificent product.
“Prima Donna,” was written and performed during the most dramatic period of my life to date, and considering my life, that’s pretty dramatic! New arrivals, death, terrible defeat and glorious triumph line the tale of this work both on stage and off, a tale that is still unfolding and that I would both like you to know and even more importantly, be a part of.
From the early rocky days with the Metropolitan Opera, the valiant premiere at the Manchester International Festival, sold out shows in London and Toronto and finally the firestorm involvement with the New York City Opera at BAM, the tale of “Prima Donna’s” coming to life is already well deemed for a grand opera legend and seems to be growing still.
This is where you come in, the final great chorus!
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.”
For those who don’t know, the opera is a two act affair set on the day in the life of a great diva who is deciding whether or not to continue her career. With Paris as a backdrop, the opera both borrows from operatic myth and legend as well as my own very contemporary personal experiences as a singer. The themes of loss, fear, hope and ultimately acceptance are deeply explored in this work by both the soloists and the orchestra, and I’m very proud that for a first venture into the operatic world I love so much, though not a masterpiece perhaps (that will come much later in my life), “Prima Donna” is a solid and viable offering that both people love performing in and audiences enjoy watching and listening to. It’s vitally important we get a quality recording for generations to come.
Thanks for taking the time to consider this unique offer and rest assured that if you decide to come along for the ride, it’s gonna be a blast, opera style….which is big.
-Rufus