Rufus Wainwright's Opera 'Prima Donna' to Premiere at Luminato

by Jarrett Martineau | March 30, 2009 at 07:36 pm

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Acclaimed singer and songwriter Rufus Wainwright will premiere his long-awaited debut opera Prima Donna to North American audiences in 2010.

Wainwright's cleverly titled piece, for which he "wrote the score and a French-language libretto", will be performed as part of Toronto's acclaimed city-wide celebration of "arts and creativity", the Luminato Festival.

Wainwright wrote the score and a French-language libretto for Prima Donna, his new work set in Paris in 1970, in which aging opera singer Régine Saint Laurent struggles to regain her status as a top-flight soprano on the world stage. In a statement released yesterday, Wainwright described composing an opera as a “daring and risky” endeavour and thanked Toronto “for having the guts to make it happen.”