manhattan melodrama?
The atmosphere around Gotham may become rather more bizarre sometime in the next couple of years when Rufus Wainwright brings his opera Prima Donna into New York.
It’s only a rumor for now, of course, but that’s something, isn’t it? La Cieca bases her eager soupçonmongering on an interview the scruffy Scriabin gave to Montréal-based alt-weekly Hour, in which he mentions New York and Paris as places where there is “interest.” Whatever that means, it’s good enough for gossip work.
The interview also notes that during rehearsals for the recent Uraufführung, recovering Rufus shunned party-crazed Manchester for the less tempting envirions of Yorkshire, where apparently the gay sex and meth scene is pretty much nonexistent. This tidbit suggests to La Cieca that when Rufus arrives in NYC for the local Prima Donna premiere, he will sublet a nice place in Park Slope.
As you all surely know by now, Wainwright attended the gala opening night of Prima Donna garbed as Giuseppe Verdi, in the company of “Giacomo Puccini,” who was actually his boyfriend — Rufus’s boyfriend, La Cieca means, not Verdi’s — German theater director Jörn Weisbrodt. (“Tell me, girl, do you ever Jörn?” ” “I Jörn my living.”)
Anyway, La Cieca thinks it would be a superbly flamboyant gesture of support for all of the parterre box contingent to show up for the New York premiere of PD not in our usual mufti but rather in the guise of favorite opera composers.
La Cieca herself naturally will go as Amy Beach, and she suggests the cher public use the comments section of this item to coordinate their opening night drag.
But can the Harvard player “run” an aria? The last time I ran an aria it was a mess and I couldn’t sit for a week.
I’m glad Rufus finally stopped dating his mother.
Cosmo @ #10: If you’re going to go as Corigliano and Adamo, who are they going to go as?
Maybe they can go as Rufus and Jörn.
Rufus’s very bio is an opera Jörning to be Björn.
Inveterate Gossip # 33 makes an excellent point. I’ll have to rethink my masquerade. Perhaps if Corigliano and Adamo attend they could serenade the gathered throng with “Un Canadien errant,”
(Banni de ses foyers,
Parcourait en pleurant
Des pays étrangers.)
Mark Adamo has a lovely lyric tenor and John Corigliano is an ace accompanist. Like the baritone aria in “Little Women” it might upstage the entire event!