First Night: Prima Donna, Palace Theatre, Manchester
Charming performance fails to rescue flimsy plot
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Independent Minds
A diva whose voice has been silenced. A soprano haunted by the nightmarish memory of her last appearance. It's a great idea and might easily have made a bittersweet song in the hands of that quirky singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright.
The trouble is, it's actually the basis of his first opera, Prima Donna and this flimsy plot is spun out into a cheesy piece of full-length music theatre. The only surprise was 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. With no cast list in the printed programme, it seemed as though the singers were relegated to bit parts in the Wainwright show.
In fact Janis Kelly was superb as the prima donna, Regine, stitching something almost striking out of insubstantial material. Shimmering and stratospheric, Rebecca Bottone made a charming maid, singing longingly of her native Picardie. Pierre-André Valadi conducted the orchestra of Opera North who did its best with a score utterly lacking in dramatic pace. Director Daniel Kramer had clearly tried to invest some drama into the action. Wacky costumes and evocative sets were garishly lit.
The libretto, co-written by Wainwright and Bernadette Colmine, was in French. It wouldn't have much mattered in what language Prima Donna was sung, the surtitles simply revealed the paucity of the absurd unfolding tale of operatic woe. When New York's Met backed off from its commission, Manchester International Festival, snapped it up. In collaboration with Sadler's Wells, and with the involvement of Opera North, Prima Donna was hotly tipped to be a worthy successor to Damon Albarn's Monkey premiered at the 2007 Manchester Festival.
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.
Regina is dominated by a sleazy, bullying, Mephisto-type butler, well-characterised by Jonathan Summers. When she finally gets rid of him and his overbearing pressure on her to sing again, her life seems as if it might take a happier turn. But no, the singer-turned-journalist (a game William Joyner) who has unexpectedly awakened love in her heart again, appears with a strange woman (his fiancée) in traditional Japanese costume. In a curious twist of the Madam Butterfly situation, he takes away the diva's hope. Until, that is, the fireworks (it is Bastille Day in Seventies Paris) reminds her of her patriotic duty, to the strains of La Marseillaise. A curtain across the stage shows a woman, open-mouthed, screaming. By the end of Prima Donna, I knew how she felt.
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Comments
Of course the rest will be without bias.
>"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. "
A bit to clever for you eh?
My boyfriend and I were really looking forward to seeing Prima Donna. As opera virgins, we too felt that perhaps a piece written by a popular performer (even if he does come across as totally self-absorbed - i too saw the documentary the other night) would be a fantastic introduction to the world of opera. We felt a huge sense of anticipation, only slightly marred by the self-indulgence of Rufus beforehand - we hadn't come to see him! Despite a dramatic opening that we hoped was going to set the tone for the rest of the piece, it soon descended into one of the most boring nights of my life. I too felt the performances were great, and we wanted to like it simply for that. But it dragged on, and on, and on ... nothing was happening. I appreciated that Rufus must have been trying to present some extended metaphor in this work, but we really couldn't be bothered staying to try and figure it out ... we left during the interval. Perhaps, as an art form, opera just isn't for me. But I wouldn't want to rule it out altogether simply because of this.
We went to see Prima Donna expected drama, excitement, wanting to be stirred (we'd seen Elbow on the big screen in Castlefield the night before and even though we a 15 minute walk away from where the actual performance was taking place, the music gave us goose bumps). We left very disappointed ...
I would suggest that you give new works a chance by at least staying to the end. But it's your loss.
It is always exciting to see a brand new opera, and long may new operas continue to be written. However, the problem with Prima Donna is that the material is simply not very good. Wainwright hasn't, as mel1gib states 'bridged the gap between the elite hierarchy of traditional opera snobs, and used his talent to bring it more to the man in the street level.' In fact, he has done quite the opposite and has written a very traditional opera in the style remarkably reminiscent of Puccini and his contempories, but lacking the same qualities that made them great composers. Hardly a great leap forward for the genre.
And I must take issue with one incorrect fact above - there was no cast list in the programme? Which programme were you reading? Mine had a cast list and full cast biographies!
My own review - as someone who actually likes Wainwright, for all his vanity - is below.
A rousing reception for the premiere of an elegant and elegiac first opera from Rufus Wainwright.
Destined to be one of this year's imperfect but inspired cultural events. The libretto faltered in places, leaving the protagonist soprano Regine somewhat thinly drawn, but was more than rescued by a richly romantic orchestral score. Lilting Straussian strings were punctuated by Verdiesque dramatic sweeps and the occasional playful harmony reminiscent of Rossini. Intriguingly, it is in the metaopera "Eleanor of Acquitane" that Wainwright's own distinctive musical style is most apparent, as though neatly showcased, staking it's place in an operatic lineage.
Set in 1970's Paris - and in the ostentatious stage design you could almost taste the decay of the glamour - the overture nonetheless carried echoes of 1940's Hollywood, suitable to this Norma Desmond story. The second act was by far the stronger musically, opening with a sweetly exquisite aria from Rebecca Bottone as Marie, a highlight of the night.
A well-deserved standing ovation for Rufus, himself sat in the stalls, resplendent in top hat and frock coat (because this is how opera should be done). For fans I shall note that Jorn, Kate and Martha were also in attendance.
whoah, there, back off, bitch!
But thanks anyway for the object lesson in how not to review a piece of art.
Astonishingly, she intimates a lack of negativity re. Mr Albarn's work, betraying an inability to understand the worth of music at the most basic of levels (a comparison between the work of Blur, et al, and that of Rufus Wainwright is like comparing The Beatles with Spandau Ballet - one of them can produce brilliant music, the other, one can dismiss as dismally mediocre).
I'm going to the matinee of PM tomorrow - let's see if Ms W. can prove me wrong. I doubt that the work will be prove to be the piece of worthless garbage she thinks it to be.
Craig Thomas, Derbyshire
My Wainwright is not short on ego. However, it appears to be part of the complexity of his character that he is always respectful of fellow performers. He also seems to make a lot of self-deprecating comments.
I have seen many operas at Covent Garden and the New York Met. I thoroughly enjoyed last night's premiere and would encourage opera lovers and people new to the art form to attend.
I know that reviews aren't about facts, but please when you use some get them right.
Phil Fried Philfried.com
I am pleased for your talent as a composer.
Kindly back up your disregard for Wainwright
with a demonstration of your latest work.
Good luck with your career as a David Walliams
lookalike. "The composer says... No "
Phil Fried, PhilFried.com OperaBob.org
Tell me, are we not allowed to write operas now unless we do them in the manner we're meant to? Is that what art is about these days?
I'm very much for the forward progression of forms, but not at the expense of all creativity.
The score I heard on Sunday afternoon - and which hundreds of us cheered volubly - was full of drama. It was unprecedently nuanced for a popular songwriter, teeming with imagination and colour and unexpected detail that not even his most labyrinthine songs have hinted at. Remind me of other chart acts who can orchestrate with this level of clarity and fluency. And in moments, there were some remarkable musical coups: for my money, he musically evokes fireworks better than the three benchmarkers here, Debussy, Handel and Stravinsky.
But it seems Miss Walker misses the fundamental point. Prima Donna is quite clearly not the calling card of a radical voice breaking uncharted artistic waters: it's evidently in every atom of its being an ode to the records of opera that Wainwright listened to as a boy. It's a love letter to opera, and I think the point which she and some other critics have startlingly missed is that it invites us too to wallow in the majesty, the luxury, the sheer guilty refulgence of a golden period of opera-writing and opera-recording. What is so wrong with that? Is Wainwright not allowed to write that because it's out of step to do so? Because he's not been to IRCAM and Tanglewood and hung out with Boulez? And is the edict that an occasional burst of pure nostalgia has no place in art? (What would Proust say to that?)
Yes, I too want to see the contemporary opera that shows us the way forward, absolutely, but this doesn't fail just because its intention is to do something else entirely.
I can't help feeling certain custodians of opera just feel a bit threatened by this gaudy, glitzy invasion on their patch. Get over it, gang. Rufus doesn't hurt opera here at all, and - if you get into the evident spirit of it - you might just find he brings a lot of new attention and enthusiasm to the art form. Certainly the packed house at the Palace yesterday didn't look remotely like Verdi fans, but perhaps they might be after this. Now wouldn't that be a dreadful consequence...
:)
Thought I was fearful, given the sour eye and concrete ears of our now dear friend, Ms Walker, I found myself increasingly absorbed in Prima Donna the further it progressed. By the interval I was completely caught up in it and hungry for the second half. As for the plot being as thin as gruel, it seemed to me that the fading of a show biz career, of talent, is perfectly acceptable territory for a theatrical yarn. And I remembered while things were ticking along about my experience of La Boheme some years ago, sitting up in the cheap seats reading the surtitles with increasing incredulity, so ludicrous were they. Oh, how we laughed - this is high art, we thought? Pull the other one. Til last Sunday I hadn't been back to the opera house.
The libretto, then, was fine. Unlike one national critic I found the journalist-singing wannerbee plausible enough. Indeed, his inclusion injected a nice touch of the late-20th/early 21st century into the thematic structure. To focus on the media's view of art and of itself was really quite fresh and certainly culturally relevant.
The staging, however, was fantastic. One person's 'gaudy' is this writer's startlingly attractive, exciting even. I'm talking about the lighting and the costume. Spatially, the stage sets were terrific and not remotely backward-looking. The singing, to me, was wonderful, the performances of the singers absolutely committed. Thus, as the afternoon passed, I found myself moving further and further from judging Rufus's music and simply giving myself up to two and a half hours of profoundly satisfying entertainment.
Musically, I expected Ruf to play to his songwriting strengths, peppering the event with his gift for creating deeply melodious lines above emotional harmonic movement. Startlingly, this didn't happen. Where were the composer's grand camp gestures? Nowhere in evidence.
Deliberately confounding expectation, I suspect, Ruf delivered a score of subtelty and restraint This was so much the case that when the second act opened into Regine's maid's aria re. Picardie, the effect was like a starburst, before its heart-twanging emotionalism moved you. The outbreak of applause was wonderfully spontaneous.
Thereafter, the minutes sped by. Too quickly by. Janis Kelly 's performance increasingly dominated proceedings, and 'giving the performance of her life' (some critic or other) this was no bad thing. Indeed, in the end, I think the whole audience just wanted to sweep her up in their arms and cover her with kisses of gratitude.
My annoyances with the art form, 'opera' had completely disappeared by this point. As stated above, the combination of sound, spectacle and narrative had long since made a convert of me. Sure, there was nothing particularly original in the story, but originality in art is hysterically overrated. In music it has led us to the senseless atonality of Webern, Cage, et al; in opera, in terms of subject, to Nixon in China. Say, what? If Rufus Wainwright's love letter to the history of opera is banal, then thanks, I'll take it. The pointless search for the new that leads to cul de sacs of abstruseness? You can keep the results to yourselves, ta.
For sure, Rufus will not be able to repeat this trick; willl surely need, rhythmically and harmonically to move in the direction of modernism (the minimalism of Reich, for example) in opera no. 2, but for his opening gambit, surely he has performed an immensely creditable feat.
And I confess. I have taken a good look at what the London opera scene is offering me, something I really did not expect to come out of Ruf's first excursion. As the man above said, yeah, that's a terrible thing for Wainwright to have done to the art form.