Dangerous territory

Anyone less like the clichéd idea of a prima donna than Janis Kelly would be hard to find. She is known and loved as a singer and consummate actress with a conspicuous lack of airs and graces who will throw herself into anything, the more challenging and off the wall the better, imbuing performances with her own particular brand of intense musicality and grace. Lucky Rufus Wainwright, then, who has cast her to perform the title role in his first foray into writing opera, Prima Donna, which will be given its world première at the Manchester International Festival on 10 July.

I ask her, tentatively, what it’s like to be playing a woman of approximately her own age when she can, and almost invariably does, play much younger women. She roars with laughter. ‘It’s fantastic, actually. And it’s so great that someone has written a good role for an older woman. There aren’t enough of them about. In fact, because the opera is a day in the life of a woman at a crisis point in her career, there are flashbacks and so I do have to play younger as well. No matter what part I play I usually have to find that inner girl somewhere — bring those ringlets out!’

So who is this prima donna she’s embodying? ‘Her name is Régine Saint Laurent. She’s a famous French singer who was probably the great Traviata of her day, the leading lyric soprano at the Palais Garnier. There are echoes of Maria Callas and, because there’s a character (played by Jonathan Summers) who’s a Svengali-type manager, there are also echoes of other singers who’ve had very forceful partners or managers, pushing them in their career. The setting is Paris 1970, it’s Bastille Day, and she’s on the verge of a comeback in an opera written specially for her called Aliénor d’Aquitaine, in which she triumphed six years earlier. At that time, something happened that caused her to stop singing altogether and now it’s been six years since she’s sung a note.’

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