Rufus Wainwright's "'Prima Donna' is so busy being a homage that it has forgotten to be an opera. It is a tasteful, well-intentioned, ultimately mystifying failure: mystifying because, after years of development and performances in Manchester, England; London; Melbourne, Australia; and Toronto, no one has seen fit to give it a plot."
Wherever you went in 2011, you could hear Adele’s 21 catapulted at you from every open car window, open apartment window, and open mouth. That album has its charms, but I see a much more long-lasting and powerful influence in Rufus Wainwright’s Poses, and its tenth anniversary has passed without appropriate fanfare.
It was the oddity of the singer’s name and his striking picture that enticed me to buy his first CD with not even a minute between first look and printed receipt. What I heard when I popped the CD into my stereo was astounding and peculiar, a heady mixture of Jon Brion-produced clangs and strums and insistent [...]
We're delighted to premiere this new episode of Site & Sound, which stars Rufus Wainwright performing "When Most I Wink," one of three songs based on Shakespeare sonnets that appear on his new album "All Days are Nights: Songs for Lulu"-to be released on April 20th by Decca Records. ("When Most I Wink" is based on Shakespeare's Sonnet 43.) Site & Sound is a new, web-based documentary music series dedicated to telling the individual stories of unique live performances, like this one, in and around New York City. Each episode of Site & Sound covers a single performance by one musician or band.
