Rufus Sells Wardrobe To Fund Recording
Rufus Wainwright’s wardrobe is renowned for some exotic made-to-measure creations, as befits the flamboyant singer. But now he is offering fans the suit off his back, so that he can give his first opera the opulent recording it deserves. “Prima Donna,” the story of an aging opera singer anxiously preparing for her comeback in Seventies Paris, was received with acclaim when Wainwright premiered it at Manchester International Festival in 2009 and in Brooklyn in 2012. The singer says he now wants to “fulfill a powerful desire of mine – to properly record my first opera, with a fabulous orchestra, and release a double CD and vinyl of that recording” before a world concert tour. Unfortunately, Wainwright, 41, whose oeuvre extends from lush chamber pop to jazz, has been unable to find a financial backer for the project. “Quality studio opera recordings are extremely expensive and too time consuming to pull off these days, and it seems that a once-vibrant recording industry is no longer what it was,” he explains. Undeterred, he has launched an appeal on the crowd-funding website PledgeMusic to help raise what is believed to be a “six-figure” dollar sum for the recording.
