From La Repubblica, April 30, 2007 – by Giuseppe Videtti

RUFUS WAINWRIGHT, "I, A GAY PRIMADONNA, CONQUER THE METROPOLITAN""

Meeting in London with the singer-songwriter who is writing an opera

Rufus Wainwright

LONDON – An evening at the London Palladium, like half a century ago. On stage, the great orchestra, in front of the microphone a thirty-three-year-old gay boy who imitates Judy Garland. It's the most extravagant idea that singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright has ever come up with: to re-sing the entire concert Judy gave in 1961 at Carnegie Hall, and later at the Palladium, exactly as it is heard on the divine singer's recently reissued album (Judy at Carnegie Hall). As Rufus points out, she "became a slave and victim of the American imagination," a myth for everyone, an icon for homosexuals.

«"I transformed into Judy Garland because I needed something to occupy my mind between albums. I listened to that record constantly in the car and sang along. Then, suddenly, I felt the need to regurgitate everything I'd learned. That's how the idea for the concert was born. The live CD of the event will be released in September," says Wainwright, son of singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III and folk singer Kate McGarrigle, who on May 11th will release Release the Stars, produced by Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys.

It is the fifth album of the most sought-after cult-singer of the United States, a privileged of gay rock, which usually remains confined to the underground. The great Cole Porter hid his homosexuality his entire life behind a marriage of convenience, Elton John took twenty years to come out as gay, Freddie Mercury never really came out. Wainwright, on the other hand, is part of that small group of artists who have challenged show business by revealing their sexual inclinations from their debut, such as the singer kd lang, the group Scissor Sisters, Melissa Etheridge, Antony, and in more remote times the Canadian singer-songwriter James Ian..

In your new song, "Going to a Town," you sing: "I'm tired of America..." Does that mean you've decided to move to Europe, maybe to Berlin, where your partner lives? That America today is too conservative for a gay artist?

«I live in New York, and I haven't decided to emigrate yet, unless they force me to do so after listening to this song. It's a song I composed in fifteen minutes, on the piano, and the words came spontaneously, along with the music, as if I'd suddenly become the spokesperson for a sentiment about the United States that has been hovering around the rest of the world for a few years. And the more I sing it, the more I feel like I'm not speaking to the country, but to a lover with whom I've had an intense relationship and with whom I'm starting to have some problems.

For some time now I have stopped thinking of Bush as the person primarily responsible for the world's problems, because I believe that All industrialized countries unforgivably underestimate and neglect the plagues that afflict us, whether AIDS, the environment, or civil rights. The greatest hypocrisy is that they all profess to be deeply religious, preach love for Jesus, yet daily betray his teachings. Although America's image has been significantly tarnished during the Bush administration, a certain spirit of freedom still lingers there, a kind of hope that I struggle to find elsewhere. I lived here in Europe, I had a great time, but America will always be my home.

Now that she's in a stable relationship, the first of her life as she revealed to the audience at the Palladium, has she settled down?

«There's a part of me that's always looking for love, even when I'm in love. I'm definitely a gay worshipper of Aphrodite, the eternal goddess of love, constantly searching for the impossible, capable of falling in love with a statue (there's one on the cover of his latest CD, ed.).

She says, "I'm tired of being a cult singer, I want to be a star." Like Judy Garland?

«I'd like to make some money and increase my pop potential. But on the other hand, I also think the world, right now, needs music that helps you think, with content, and that's what I'm trying to do. It's the same thing artists like Antony, Scissor Sisters, or my sister Martha (Wainwright) say. I was very ambitious in the early days, ruthlessly determined to become famous, to get people talking about me. Artistically, I succeeded, but I was extremely disappointed not to have legions of fans waiting for me outside my dressing room and a chauffeur at my disposal. My record company had offered me the prospect of becoming a big star, and I believed in it. It's still an image I carry around with me like a puppy. Judy is my idol, but I know she was a victim of show business, while I'm learning to channel my ambition positively. I'm currently composing an opera for the Metropolitan Opera in New York. It's called Prima Donna and it tells the story of a day in the life of an opera singer. My dream now is to compose at least three operas that will be performed for the next two centuries.

Who are your role models?

«I am a devourer of Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, Bellini and Berlioz. "Do I Disappoint You," the opening track on the new album, is decidedly influenced by Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade and a little by Mahler. As a kid, I adored Cyndi Lauper, Prince, Eurythmics, and Tina Turner. Then, at 14, I had a kind of epiphany listening to Verdi's Requiem. My father was very confused by these musical extravagances. Once, he came into my room and found me curled up in a corner, sobbing while listening to "Rex Tremendae" from the Requiem on my headphones. He thought I wasn't a very healthy teenager. But then he had to accept the fact that I was gay and wanted to be an artist. He must have thought: better intoxicated by opera than by heroin.".

Opera is certainly the most arduous path to the global success she aspires to. There's only one Callas.

«"I've learned that success comes in mysterious ways, when you least expect it. That's the mistake I made as a pop singer: clinging too stubbornly to the idea of success.".

What has been the most rewarding moment of your career?

«"Working with Burt Bacharach. He made me feel like a diva, a new Dusty Springfield!"»

Press release from Bologna's LGBT associations

'A ship has arrived loaded with… violence, sexism, homophobia!

Bologna's gay, lesbian, and transgender communities speak out against sexist and homophobic concerts.

The gay, lesbian, and trans associations and groups in Bologna have learned with concern that Estragon and Link intend to host concerts by Capleton and Beenie Man, musicians famous throughout the world for their songs steeped in religious fundamentalism, which praise the burning of gays and lesbians and convey hatred for all diversity.

We cannot and do not want to allow these individuals to pass through the cultural venues of this city and, in particular, those that should represent spaces of criticism towards certain messages.. Openly patriarchal, sexist, and homophobic cultural forms are the breeding ground in which oppression grows and becomes a mainstream language and a way of life.

We already experience daily the preaching, pressure, and interference of the Catholic Church and the Vatican, their constant intrusions and endless blather about the traditional family, homosexuality, abortion, and women's choices. We experience daily the aggression and fundamentalism of those who seek to impose a religious order, perhaps passed off as a "natural" or "biological" order, on people's sexual behavior and lifestyles.

Over the past year in Italy we have witnessed an escalation of violence against lesbians, gays, and transgender people.(To name just a few recent events) the rape of a lesbian in Viareggio outside a nightclub, and the attempt by Forza Nuova to prevent the Pride parade in Catania. All of this is happening in a growing climate of ambushes, where the culture of aggression, intolerance, and violence is insinuating itself and spreading throughout society and playing out on the streets of our cities.

We cannot allow explicitly fascist, reactionary, sexist, and homophobic messages and forms of communication to continue to spread freely, and even worse, to permeate all those places that should be the starting point for the fight against sexist and chauvinistic violence. We must begin to demand a quality culture, free from oppression, intolerance, and hypocrisy.

And it would be hypocritical to welcome these singers and their letters promising not to perform homophobic songs at their concerts in Bologna. This would be censorship, and we don't care. We don't want them to sing their songs in Bologna or anywhere else in the world.

CAPLETON, BEENIE MAN, SIZZLA, ELEPHANT MAN BOLOGNA REJECTS YOU!
and rejects all those who, like you, openly promote hatred and intolerance.

LET'S STOP THESE CONCERTS!

Arcilesbica Bologna
Arcigay Il Cassero
Gay Antagonism
Fuoricampo Lesbian Group
MIT — Transgender Identity Movement

These are the translations of some texts

Elephant Man – A Nuh Fi Wi Fault (Not Our Fault)
Battyman fi dead! [Faggots to death!]
Please mark these words.
Gimme tha tech-nine [Give me a machine gun]
Shoot dem like bird [Shoot 'em like birds]
Two women skirt hock up inna bed
Tha's two Sodomites dat fi dead [These two sodomites should die]
When you hear a Sodomite get raped [When you hear of two lesbians getting raped]
But a fi wi fault [It's not our fault!]

Elephant man – Log on
Dance wi a dance and a bun out a freaky man [Join our dance, let's go burn the fags]
Step on him like an old cloth.
A dance wi a dance and a crush out a bingi man [Join the dance, let's crush the fags]
Do di walk, mek mi see the light and di torch dem fast [Come on, I want to see the lighters and the torches!]

Beenie Man – Bad Man Chi chi man (Fags are bad)
If you're not a queer man, raise your hand and shout NO!
If you're not a lesbian wave your right hand and (NO!!!)
[the hand and shout NO!]
Some bwoy will go a jail fi kill man tun bad man chi chi man!!! [Some
boys will go to jail for killing others and they will start doing it
gay sex]

Beenie Man – Roll Deep
Roll deep motherfucka, kill pussy-sucker [Kill the oral sex addict]
Take a bazooka and kill the batty-fucker

Capleton – Chi Chi's Bun Out – (Burn the Fags)
Bun out ah chi chi, Blood out ah chi chi [Burn the fags, destroy them]
Batty dem ah fuck and ah suck too much pussy [Faggots fuck each other and have oral sex]
Blood out ah chi chi, Blood out ah shitty [Destroy the faggots, destroy these assholes]

Sizzla – Pump up (Turn up the volume)
Step up inna front line [Jump to the front line]
fire fi di man dem weh go ride man behind [Burn the men who take it
behind]
Shot battybwoy, my big gun boom