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Rufus Wainwright

Prima Donna

Deutsche Grammophon

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Rufus Wainwright - Prima Donna (Making of Part1)
Rufus Wainwright - Prima Donna (Making of Part2)
Rufus Wainwright - Prima Donna (Making of Part3)
1 Wainwright: Prima Donna - Act 1, Overture  
2 Wainwright: Prima Donna - Act 1, Scene 1  
3 Wainwright: Prima Donna - Act 1, Scene 2  
4 Wainwright: Prima Donna - Act 1, Scene 3  
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10 Wainwright: Prima Donna - Act 1, Scene 9  
11 Wainwright: Prima Donna - Act 1, Scene 10  
12 Wainwright: Prima Donna - Act 1, Scene 11  
13 Wainwright: Prima Donna - Act 1, Scene 12  
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22 Wainwright: Prima Donna - Act 1, Scene 21  
23 Wainwright: Prima Donna - Act 1, Scene 22  
24 Wainwright: Prima Donna - Act 1, Scene 23  
25 Wainwright: Prima Donna - Act 2, Overture  
26 Wainwright: Prima Donna - Act 2, Scene 1  
27 Wainwright: Prima Donna - Act 2, Scene 2  
28 Wainwright: Prima Donna - Act 2, Scene 3  
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30 Wainwright: Prima Donna - Act 2, Aria  
31 Wainwright: Prima Donna - Act 2, Scene 5  
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34 Wainwright: Prima Donna - Act 2, Scene 8  
35 Wainwright: Prima Donna - Act 2, Scene 9  
36 Wainwright: Prima Donna - Act 2, Scene 10  
37 Wainwright: Prima Donna - Act 2, Scene 11  
38 Wainwright: Prima Donna - Act 2, Scene 12  
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Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright releases his debut opera, Prima Donna, for the first time on audio since its 2009 premiere at the Manchester International Festival.  The recording, just released on October 2 on Deutsche Grammophon/UMC follows the live event, Prima Donna: A Symphonic Visual Concert held at the Athens Festival in Greece in September. Prima Donna's central character, a retired Diva struggling to make her return to the stage and regain her former years of greatness, was inspired by the BBC Lord Harewood interviews with Maria Callas in her later years. 

  • Rufus Wainwright's new album goes folk with Brandi Carlile, John Legend, David Byrne, Sheryl Crow, and Chaka Khan / SPIN
    Posted At: March 7, 2023 12:00 AM
    ‘Folkocracy’ is out on June 2, just a few weeks prior to the artist’s 50th birthday

    SPIN's Jonathan Cohen writes….Rufus Wainwright has never been shy about putting his own unique spin on any number of musical styles, from ’70s singer/songwriter fare to belting out Judy Garland classics at Carnegie Hall. Ahead of his 50th birthday in July, Wainwright is returning to the roots passed down to him by his...
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  • The songs that the Wainwright family wrote about each other / FAR OUT
    Posted At: December 15, 2022 12:00 AM
    FAR OUT's Tyler Golsen writes…..By all accounts, the Wainwrights appear to be one of music’s more dysfunctional family units. Headed by 1970s folk singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III, the family also features Loudon’s sister Sloan and his three children: Martha, Rufus, and Lucy. Martha and Rufus’ mother was Canadian folk singer Kate McGarrigle, while Lucy’s mother is a fellow folkie, Suzzy Roche. All in...
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  • Rufus Wainwright is masterful at the Melbourne zoo / brisbane times
    Posted At: February 24, 2019 12:00 AM

    It's hard to imagine a better setting to listen to music than inside Melbourne Zoo at dusk on an idyllic late-summer Saturday evening. Families of all shapes and sizes spread out picnic rugs and tucked in to wedges of cheese and containers of dips while enjoying a thoroughly civilised night of chilled contemporary pop. The Zoo Twilights series - which has so far featured mostly Aussie acts such as Th...
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  • Rufus Wainwright makes; Paste - 30 Best Albums of 1998
    Posted At: April 17, 2018 12:00 AM

    If you tuned into almost any rock or pop radio station in 1998, you might have lost hope in music. Maybe you'd be lucky enough to catch the tail end of the ‘90s Britpop invasion, Elliott Smith's out-of-nowhere hit "Miss Misery" or something off the ubiquitous Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. You were much more likely to find Celine Dion, 98 Degrees, Matchbox Twenty, Will Smith, Limp Bizkit, way-past-th...
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  • Rufus Wainwright and SLSO. 'Let's make some art together' / St. Louis Post-Dispatch
    Posted At: February 18, 2018 12:00 AM

    "Let's make some art together," Rufus Wainwright said near the top of his concert with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Friday night at Powell Hall. The American-Canadian singer-songwriter and the orchestra did just that, and before the show was over the audience would join in, too. But it was Wainwright who did most of the heavy lifting. Coming off a string of solo dates, he admitted to the aud...
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  • Nevada Union High School will share the power of song at Miners Foundry Cultural Center / The Union of Grass Valley
    Posted At: January 11, 2018 12:00 AM

    The rafters of the 158 year-old Stone Hall will ring from 6-9 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 24, at the Miners Foundry Cultural Center, when Rod Baggett, choral conductor at Nevada Union High School and Seven Hills Middle School, along with multi-instrumentalist and singer Jonathan Meredith, will lead dozens of singers unified in song. This unique countywide experience called "The Foundry Sings" aims to gather peo...
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  • Rufus Wainwright will workshop - Hadrian at 'Opera Fusion' collaboration / Cincinnati CityBeat
    Posted At: August 17, 2017 12:00 AM

    Rufus Wainwright, the Pop singer/songwriter who has been expanding his interests into Classical music, is set to be workshopping his new opera here in late fall. It is called Hadrian and, besides Wainwright's music, has a libretto by Canadian playwright Daniel MacIvor. Commissioned by Toronto's Canadian Opera Company, it is scheduled to have its premiere there in 2018 with MacIvor as its director...
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  • Rufus Wainwright to perform at Dubai Opera / The National
    Posted At: July 20, 2017 12:00 AM

    Singer Rufus Wainwright will bring his mix of contemporary and classical sound to the Dubai Opera on December 6. Wainwright's first opera Prima Donna also enjoyed a solid international run during 2009. The songs from the production was released in a double album (also called Prima Donna) that same year. Wainwright is currently working on a new opera to be released in October next year. Wainwright co...
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  • Rufus Wainwright set for City Winery Chicago, speaks with WGN
    Posted At: April 6, 2017 12:00 AM

    Musician Rufus Wainwright joins Justin to talk about his diverse career, his fondness for playing in Chicago, coming from a great family of musicians and performers, the wide arsenal of material he draws from, the importance of taking on political and social issues in his music, how a lot of songs he wrote years ago have stood the test of time, being drawn to taking risks, the elation he feels after writ...
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  • Rufus Wainwright brings Prima Donna to Adelaide / The Australian, The Advertiser
    Posted At: March 15, 2017 12:00 AM

    The voice that comes down the line is that unmistakeable purr, perhaps betraying traces of cigarettes and chocolate milk. They were the twin vices Rufus Wainwright so memorably described in his breakthrough album Poses in 2001. The singer-songwriter outgrew the extended adolescence described on that CD, has written an opera and is working on a second, fulfilling the ambition of a lifelong love affair wit...
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  • Rufus Wainwright on Shakespeare, Leonard Cohen, and protest songs / Charleston City Paper
    Posted At: February 15, 2017 12:00 AM

    Rufus Wainwright is one of those artists who seemingly emerged with a fully formed, idiosyncratic sensibility that is uniquely his - a deep sense of song tied as much to cabaret, baroque pop, and glam rock as to the folk leanings of his parents, Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III. Wainwright's is an opera-tinged delivery with a rich, eclectic arrangement style that led the singer to critical a...
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  • This summer's Pink Martini - Colorado Symphony show at Red Rocks features Rufus Wainwright / KUVO Radio
    Posted At: February 2, 2017 12:00 AM

    "Pink Martini is like a romantic Hollywood musical of the 1940s or 50s, but with a global perspective which is modern," says founder and artistic director Thomas M. Lauderdale. "We bring melodies and rhythms from different parts of the world together to create something which is new and beautiful." The Portland, Oregon-based 'little orchestra' was founded in 1994 by Lauderdale, a Harvard graduate...
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  • Rufus Wainwright featured in Shakespeare comparison / stereophile
    Posted At: December 25, 2016 12:00 AM

    With 2016 almost behind us, there's just enough time to speak of two of the many recordings issued this year to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare. Equally commendable, albeit radically different in the way they honor the Bard, are Shakespeare Songs (Warner Classics) from tenor Ian Bostridge and pianist Anthony Pappano (available in 24/96 from HDTracks), and Take Al...
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  • Rufus Wainwright will bring Prima Donna to 2017 Auckland Festival / New Zealand Herald
    Posted At: October 27, 2016 12:00 AM

    Rufus Wainwright will bring his opera Prima Donna to Auckland as part of the Auckland Festival in 2017. After a cheery greeting, Rufus Wainwright says, "I'm looking forward to coming back down under. Waaaay down under." In March he'll be back again, this time to headline the Auckland Arts Festival for what promises to be a spectacular night of music. He's joining forces with the Auckland Phil...
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  • Life, death and opera with Rufus Wainwright / New Zealand Herald
    Posted At: October 26, 2016 12:00 AM

    After a cheery greeting, Rufus Wainwright says, "I'm looking forward to coming back down under. Waaaay down under." Wainwright is in good spirits. He's friendly and funny and very familiar with the long haul trip required to get here. He's been visiting on the regular for yonks. In recent years alone he's lit up the Civic, shared the stage with Paul Simon and headlined the Womad festival....
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  • Rufus Wainright collaborates with L.A. Dance Project / Time Out Los Angeles
    Posted At: October 20, 2016 12:00 AM

    The news we've been waiting for! The lauded L.A. Dance Project, helmed by founding artistic director Benjamin Millepied, will return to the Theatre at Ace Hotel in DTLA on December 9 and 10 to perform four unique pieces, all collaborative efforts across artistic disciplines (see the complete details for each of the four below). The performances will be accompanied by visual concepts by mixed-media ar...
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  • Choir! Choir Choir! set to take over Charlottetown's Memorial Hall / CBC
    Posted At: August 26, 2016 12:00 AM

    A Toronto choir that invites audience members to join in a mass of voices - and has had viral hits with a David Bowie tribute and Rufus Wainwright leading Hallelujah - is coming to Charlottetown. Choir! Choir Choir! will take over Memorial Hall next week with a special one-off fundraiser performance for Charlottetown's outdoor visual arts festival, Art in the Open. On August 26 at 8 p.m., the T...
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  • Rufus Wainwright - Hallelujah makes Yahoo Sports '5 new songs you need to stream'
    Posted At: August 21, 2016 12:00 AM

    Every week, there are hundreds of thousands of new songs hitting the airwaves. It's too much for just your two ears to handle: With all those options, you can't be wasting your time on tracks worthy of a thumbs-down click. But don't worry, we're going to save you the hassle. We listen to some of the most-hyped and interesting songs each week, and tell you which are worthy of your precious listening time....
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  • William Shakespeare - Songwriter / Paste
    Posted At: August 3, 2016 12:00 AM

    William Shakespeare is best known, of course, as a playwright and a sonneteer. Less appreciated, however, is his other career as a pop songwriter. This year, on the 400th anniversary of his death, Rufus Wainwright and Paul Kelly have released new albums, Take All My Loves and Seven Sonnets & a Song respectively, that make it clear just how talented the Bard was in this sideline. Both Wainwright a...
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  • Rufus Wainwright - Take All My Loves: 9 Shakespeare Sonnets / Arizona Daily Sun review
    Posted At: July 22, 2016 12:00 AM

    Rufus Wainwright's ninth studio album, Take All My Loves: 9 Shakespeare Sonnets, may be evidence that Wainwright is moving from the corporeal to the ethereal, becoming more of a timeless musical entity than just a singer. (Even the album's cover, a painting mash-up of Wainwright and Shakespeare, suggests Wainwright's persistent reveling in anachronism.) On Take All My Loves, his signature s...
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  • Rufus Wainwright's 'Take All My Loves' gets 3 stars from - The National
    Posted At: July 12, 2016 12:00 AM

    Of all the superfluous creative fanfare cooked up to mark the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare's death, Rufus Wainwright takes the Bard's biscuit with this beguiling musical tribute. A master of lushly confessional, orchestral pop, Wainwright – the precocious offspring of folk singers Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III, and big brother to fellow songsmith Martha – has also foun...
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  • Rufus Wainwright presents Montreal premiere of Prima Donna at the 2016 Jazz Festival / ETCanada
    Posted At: July 7, 2016 12:00 AM

    We have good news and we have bad news. The bad news is that we are halfway through the 2016 edition of the Montreal Jazz Festival (yes, we're "glass half-empty" people). The good news is that the festival's first week welcomed home Rufus Wainwright in what can only be described as an audio-visual tour de force. In amongst the Montreal-raised troubadour's Judy Garland paean, his musical contribution to S...
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  • Choir! Choir! Choir! - Rufus Wainwright leads 1,500-voice choir in Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah / Toronto Life
    Posted At: July 1, 2016 12:00 AM

    You might remember Choir! Choir! Choir! as the gang of singers that invaded Massey Hall for a tribute to Prince. Or the chorus that took over the AGO to cover "Space Oddity" after David Bowie's death. They're at it again-and, thankfully, no legendary musician had to die this time. During the Luminato Festival, leaders Nobu Adilman and Daveed Goldman invited cabaret crooner Rufus Wainwright to lea...
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  • Rufus Wainwright set to open - Rumors Fest in Verona / ANSA
    Posted At: June 2, 2016 12:00 AM

    Canadian singer and songwriter Rufus Wainwright, who has just released "Take All My Loves - Shakespeare sonnets", is inaugurating the fourth edition of the Rumors Festival in Verona on Thursday June 9.  Rumors Festival is an event dedicated to the voice and vocal style that back, for the fourth year, the Roman Theatre in Verona under the artistic direction of Elisabetta Fadini and within the Sum...
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  • Rufus Wainwright - Take All My Loves / Las Vegas Weekly review
    Posted At: May 26, 2016 12:00 AM

    Two new albums-Anohni's Hopelessness and Rufus Wainwright's have have rattled my brain open. Wainwright' s Take All My Loves: 9 Shakespeare Sonnets-have slapped me from my comfort zone, like the aural equivalent of the red pill. When I first saw the cover of Wainwright's Take All My Loves-featuring its maker in full Elizabethan drag-I figured he'd finally lost it. As a longti...
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  • Rufus Wainwright - Take All My Loves / PopMatters review
    Posted At: May 23, 2016 12:00 AM

    Rufus Wainwright's latest recording is a smart and engaging encapsulation of his 2009 collaboration with Robert Wilson, Shakespeare's Sonnets. The original production premiered on Easter Sunday, 2009, at the Berliner Ensemble, the theatre established by Bertold Brecht. It ran nearly 3 hours long, included 24 of Shakespeare's sonnets, and featured its many actors in cross-dress, men portraying women and v...
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  • Rufus Wainwright sets Shakespeare to music / InsideToronto Q&A
    Posted At: May 21, 2016 12:00 AM

    Spring has been the season of Shakespeare for Rufus Wainwright. The Canadian singer-songwriter has found himself immersed in the works of the Bard as part of commemorations of the 400th anniversary of the playwright's death. Wainwright recently released the album "Take All My Loves: 9 Shakespeare Sonnets." The recordings feature guest vocalists including Florence Welch and Wainwright's sister, Ma...
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  • Rufus Wainwright - Enjoying The Fruits Of Shakespeare / TidalHiFi Q&A
    Posted At: May 19, 2016 12:00 AM

    On his latest album, Take All My Loves - 9 Shakespeare Sonnets, Rufus Wainwright sets music to nine of Shakespeare's sonnets, inventively incorporating genres such as opera, pop, rock, spoken word and classical into the mix. "It totally transformed my existence," says the American-Canadian songsmith of the first time he encountered the works of William Shakespeare. The result is epic, ...
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  • Rufus Wainwright's Shakespeare Sonnets / Uinterview
    Posted At: May 8, 2016 12:00 AM

    A great deal of singer and songwriter Rufus Wainwright‘s recent work has been related to the Bard's legacy. From composing for playwright and director Robert Wilson‘s Shakespeare's Sonnets to performance arts to scoring the poet's sonnets for a symphonic orchestra, Wainwright's most recent album Take All My Loves: 9 Shakespeare Sonnets, whose release comes exactly 400 years after Shakespeare'...
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  • Watch Rufus Wainwright on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
    Posted At: May 2, 2016 12:00 AM

    Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright's Take All My Loves - celebrates the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death in typically dramatic fashion by releasing a unique collection of nine sonnets in stunning performances by both actors and vocalists. The Deutsche Grammophon release marks the first collaboration between Rufus and Marius de Vries since they co-produced the epic Wa...
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  • Rufus Wainwright - Take All My Loves / Yahoo Tech review
    Posted At: May 1, 2016 12:00 AM

    So sayeth William Shakespeare with the opening and closing lines of Sonnet 71, one of 154 infamous mini poems the noted English Bard penned about the passage of time, love, beauty, and mortality over five centuries ago. My fellow Bard has now been gone for exactly 400 years, having shuffled off this mortal coil on April 22, 1616. So who better to celebrate such an auspicious anniversary by focusing ...
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  • Rufus Wainwright / CLASH Interview
    Posted At: April 29, 2016 12:00 AM

    William Shakespeare may be best known as a playwright, but his collection of sonnets – some 154 altogether – were every bit as significant as the plays that made his name in the Elizabethan theatre era. Writers, actors, musicians and artists have drawn huge inspiration from Shakespeare's sonnets over the four centuries that have elapsed since Shakespeare slipped off his Tudor ruff and pu...
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  • Rufus Wainwright appears in many guises on - Take All My Loves / ABC News
    Posted At: April 27, 2016 12:00 AM

    Rufus Wainwright appears in many guises on "Take All My Loves," composing, producing, arranging and, least of all, singing. Instead, he presents nine of the Bard of Avon's sonnets as individual or combined performances by singers like sister Martha Wainwright and Florence Welch (without The Machine) and thespians like Helena-Bonham Carter, Carrie Fisher and William Shatner. Nearly all the poems a...
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  • Rufus Wainwright's motivations for taking on Shakespeare are entirely honourable / theguardian
    Posted At: April 27, 2016 12:00 AM

    Were most pop artists to record an album of Shakespearean sonnets to mark the 400th anniversary of the playwright's death, it would be impossible not to suspect rank opportunism. It's to Rufus Wainwright's credit, then, that his own motivations for taking on such a potentially credibility-shredding project appear to be entirely honourable. Wainwright has a history of audacious ventures – his last r...
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  • Rufus Wainwright: Take All My Loves / WFMT: Featured Release of the Week
    Posted At: April 24, 2016 12:00 AM

    Rufus Wainwright celebrates the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death by releasing a collection of nine sonnets in performances by actors and vocalists. The seeds for this album were sown in 2009, when director Robert Wilson asked Wainwright to compose music for his Shakespeare's Sonnets production. Alongside Wainwright's songs, Shakespeare's poems are also recited by a roster of renowned actors. ...
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  • Rufus Wainwright - Take All My Loves shows style and invention / The Independant review
    Posted At: April 22, 2016 12:00 AM

    Shakespeare's sonnets are an interpretive minefield for composers, which Rufus Wainwright negotiates quite nimbly on this selection, his first collaboration with producer Marius De Vries since the lush pair of Want albums. There's a keen appreciation of mood and meaning throughout, from the wistful yearning of "A Woman's Face" to the pounding guitar rock of "Unperfect Actor", delivered by Rufus and his s...
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