Source: The Motclair Times, February 12, 2009
For Rufus Wainwright, being gay can be a bit of a distraction.
Wainwright, who has been open about his homosexuality since the release of his eponymous debut album in 1998, acknowledges that he isn’t the only gay pop star, but believes he is the first to begin his career totally out of the closet.
Though his personal life has resulted in tons of press in the past decade, it has also been a liability, Wainwright told The Times.
"It’s an exciting prospect, and always has been, but on the other hand, you know, it has diminished at times my success," he said. "But I can’t really – there’s no sort of skirting the issue, because it is just a plain fact."
Tomorrow night, Feb. 13, Wainwright, 35, makes his Montclair debut, playing a solo show at the Wellmont Theatre. It’s one of a handful of shows Wainwright is performing this February, including one in Red Bank (at Montclair and Red Bank, his half-sister, Lucy Wainwright Roche, is the opening act).
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Though Wainwright is not promoting an album – his last collection of original material, "Release the Stars," was released in May 2007 – he is in the middle of a very fertile artistic period.
In July, "Prima Donna," his first opera, will premiere at Palace Theatre in Manchester, England. Wainwright, a U.S. and Canadian citizen who spent much of his youth in Montreal with his mother, the folk singer Kate McGarrigle, wrote the opera in French.
Wainwright has been an opera fan his entire life, evident in his lyrics, which are littered with operative references. On "Damned Ladies," the 10th track on his debut album, Wainwright serenades various opera heroines: "Desdemona, do not go to sleep/Brown-eyed Tosca, don’t believe the creep/I see it in his eyes."
"Prima Donna" – which focuses on a day in the life of an opera singer – will not be Wainwright’s last foray into the world of opera composing, he said.
"I intend to write many operas, and even if this one is a disaster, which has happened before in the opera world, I’ll just keep hacking away," he said.
On Wainwright’s five albums of original music, he displays an eclecticism rare in the pop world. One minute Wainwight is singing a tune that would not have been out of place on Tin Pan Alley ("Foolish Love"), the next he’s channeling 1960s pop group The Mamas and The Papas ("California").
The arrangements on his albums reflect this variety, ranging from Wainwright alone on his piano to bombastic orchestral pieces replete with hundreds of vocal overdubs. Wainwright said the arrangements are suggested by his often-confessional lyrics.
"I definitely lived my life in stages," he said. "I think the production of my albums much more reflects the outside circumstances I’ve been faced with, whether it’s been blissful ignorance of the dark side of addiction … or struggling with the war in Iraq, or subsequently being overjoyed about Barack Obama."
Wainwright’s lyrics tend toward the personal rather than the political, though he has ventured into topical waters. In "Going to a Town," the elegiac first single off his 2007 album "Release the Stars," he croons that he’s "so tired of America," while "Waiting for a Dream" on 2004’s "Want Two" laments the "ogre in the Oval Office."
Although his political slants may not make him many conservative fans, audiences at his shows are a diverse mix of young and old, gay and straight. Wainwright attributes this variety to his songwriting.
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