It was recently announced that Richard Thompson will be curating the Meltdown Festival in honour of Kate McGarrigle. One half of the giants of melodic folk, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, she died after a long battle with cancer. On her death, her son, Rufus Wainwright told his fans that one of the ‘tremendously fruitful’ things she did in her last years was witness the creation of his first opera. Rufus is nothing if not self-referential. Unsurprisingly, his new opera is named ‘Prima Donna’.

Showing at Sadlers Wells, the ‘story’ concerns a fading opera singer, which the author admits is premised on the life of Maria Callas. In this production, the diva, Régine Saint Laurent, spends her time alone in her room save for her maid and butler. It is Bastille Day in Paris (sometime in the 1970s), and she is nervously preparing for her return to the stage. A journalist appears (who happens to have studied opera), come to interview her, and she is briefly thrown back into her hey-day; reliving the great moments of her career.

She faints, he leaves, the butler shouts, the maid cries and the curtain comes down. Maybe, many operas could be boiled down to the basics in this way, but unlike them, Prima Donna seems to revel in the fact that absolutely nothing happens. Relying on rather poor lighting effects to convey the Bastille day celebrations, summed up the fact that this production has no real fireworks. To call it a damp squib would be an insult to squibs everywhere.

Several reviewers have criticised the banalities of the libretto, but, to a certain extent, this is the least of the problems. Even La Traviata opens with the line ‘You’re late. We’ve been playing cards’, but Wainwright’s words are genuinely lamentable throughout. Add to this the fact that there is no drama, no turmoil, no excitement, no arias (to speak of) and no coup de grace - and you are left with a large central void to act your way out of.

The idea of a once-famous star, unable to perform and being forced back into the limelight, is nothing new. Making an opera about an opera singer is fine, but getting the character to sing about her inability to sing, is a little too ironic for my liking. In order to clarify her roles, Régine attempts to differentiate her ‘singing’ from her everyday singing by sitting at the piano, and it is in these moments when we mostly hear Wainright’s melodic potential (and potentially his lapse into contemporary musicality). Other than that, the music is flat and laboured throughout. Ironically, the only time it lifts is when Régine puts an LP on the record player. 

Yet the vocal performances are excellent, with special praise to Régine and her maid ( Janis Kelly and Rebecca Bottone respectively). However, their melodies jarr with the orchestration, which seems at times to bear no relationship to what is happening on stage. Every orchestral instrument is used explicitly, as if Wainwright is a child in a sweet shop, and many pastiche interpretations of operatic forms are played out. For this reviewer, some subtlety would have not gone amiss. Neither would a few ‘tunes’, as they say.

On the plus side, the set design scenery is beautiful. Representing a French study of gigantic shutters, ornate doors and a fireplace, it evokes the isolation of the central story. However, the vast, barren stage frequently leaves the actors marooned with little more than florid gestures to minimise the expanse. So while the backdrop is imposing, the staging is terrible. Allegedly, when it opened in Manchester, Wainwright was so angry about this that he demanded severe changes, so God only knows how bad it once was.

When we enter Act II, the butler and maid carry on a table and remove the chaise longue (something that should have been done in the interval but was obviously necessary to create visual interest). As the overture plays the maid is left exposed on the stage and desperately ‘acts’ out the role of a maid placing the tablecloth… for five minutes. It is a silent movie moment that doesn’t help by drawing attention to the weakness of the music. Then Régine walks across the full length of the stage, puts on a glove… and ambles off for no apparent reason. At every point, it gets more and more proposterous as the potential for introducing drama is wilfully wasted. Conversely, drama is introduced from nowhere; so even though Wainwright explains that Régine is in a ‘co-dependent relationship with her butler’, his rage in the second act comes from nowhere.

I will only mention a few other annoyances: during the central duet, the pair sit rigidly in position, conveying nothing. And in the final ‘dramatic’ scene, a young actress (with no lines attributed to her character) walks on and stands still for 15 minutes. The more that it goes on, the more it resembles a secondary school play… in rehearsal.

I was reminded of the abominable ‘Behind the Iron Mask’ which closed after a self-financed three-week run in the West End. In that production, people walked out. However, such is the indulgence shown to Wainwright that the packed Sadler’s Wells’ auditorium whooped when he appeared on stage and gave him seven – admittedly increasingly weary - curtain calls. 

Even though this production shares some dramatic similarities with Sunset Boulevard and Phantom of the Opera (both musical styles I feel he would be more comfortable with), Wainwright will not be able to find his true ouevre if he is overflattered at every turn.