Rufus Wainwright has gone through so much lately (prepping his forthcoming sixth album, the loss of his amazing mother, his opera debut, and more), but his drive to unleash brilliant performances has not been hindered one bit. This weekend (March 14, specifically) Wainwright and his equally talented sister, Martha, will perform at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City.
“[D]eath, birth, opera and Obamacare are but the few icebergasteroids pirouetting about my weary head,” Wainwright wrote on his site before unveiling “the onset of yet another Blackoutsabbath cycle.” So what will go down at the aforementioned small, intimate concert at 643 Park Avenue? “Martha will sing [Edith] Piaf and I (drum roll please)………….will sing the entire Berlioz song cycle, ‘Les Nuits d’Ete.’”
The man has guts, I say, but there’s one stipulation:
I don’t consider this first run through of Hector’s massive work as the official premiere of yet another daunting move I’m making in the world of classical music. If anything, it’s a bench mark set to aid the rise of this gnarled bud that one day will see the light of day and blossom into a full blown lugubrious flower……in other words, I’m going to make a lot of mistakes.
Playing Judy Garland is one thing, but taking on Berlioz’s Shakespearean song cycle in the same decade is the kind of thing that even Antony might shy away from. Godspeed, Rufus.