Even with a few false starts and French flubs, Rufus Wainwright charmed the crowd with humour and heart at the National Arts Centre (NAC) Nov. 12.
Wainwright came on stage clad in red and green plaid slacks, a knotted neck scarf and a red poppy on his vest. He waved to the audience as they exploded into applause.
He sat at the piano and dived into a rendition of “The Art Teacher.” His hands flew across the keys as he threw his head back and closed his eyes while singing.
Wainwright said he has developed expensive tastes while recording his new album in New York with Mark Ronson, who produced Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black.
“So I needed to come here and make some money,” he joked. ”Thanks for letting me come here to do that.”
Besides working on his new album, Wainwright will be opening the New York City Opera season Nov. 17. Also, his opera, Prima Donna will be playing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in February.
“So if you can’t make it [to New York] in November you have to come in February. You have no choice,” Wainwright laughed.
His performance at the NAC wasn’t without glitches.
After singing the opening to “Martha” and “Sanssouci,” he stopped and started over. The audience didn’t seem to mind, though, and encouraged Wainwright with applause.
Wainwright also struggled with his French grammar. The audience helped him with that, too. A woman yelled “elle,” the pronoun he was searching for. He redeemed himself with “Complainte de la Butte” from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack and “Les Feux d’Artifice t’Appellent.”
Wainwright also strummed a new song, “I’m Out Of The Game.” The first time he sang this song was at a fundraiser where Wainwright and his sister Martha performed, he said.
Wainwright played another new song, “Candles.”
“It’s an Irish folk song and I wrote it about Kate. The great Kate,” Wainwright said, referring to his mother Kate McGarrigle, who died in 2010 from sarcoma, a rare form of cancer.
Wainwright’s musical family puts on an annual Christmas concert to raise money for the Kate McGarrigle Fund for Sarcoma Research. Wainwright said this is why he wore “Christmassy pants.”
After an encore, Wainwright returned to the stage a third time to perform Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” before capping off the evening with one of his mother’s songs, “The Walking Song.”
Wainwright was one of the highlighted performances at NAC Presents, which features contemporary Canadian artists, said Marie-Chantale Labbé-Jacques, spokeswoman for NAC.
Wainwright is a younger artist and his music is less traditional, which is why Labbé-Jacques said he attracted a “younger audience.”
Leaving the theatre, third-year architecture student Gala Chauvette-Groulx, 25, said she couldn’t stop smiling.
“It’s my fourth time seeing him and I’ve never been disappointed,” she said.
