(by Claudia Fascia)
Canadian singer and songwriter Rufus
Wainwright, who has just released "Take All My Loves -
Shakespeare sonnets", is inaugurating the fourth edition of the
Rumors Festival in Verona on Thursday.
The artist said his only European concert will include a
"mixture" of his most recent and earlier work.
A guest star at the Sanremo Music Festival in 2014,
Wainwright said he will be performing music ranging from
"Intimate Judy (dedicated to Judy Garland) to Shakespeare's
sonnets, to something from my oldest works like Out of the Game
and Songs for Lulu".
Wainwright will be performing Shakespeare for the first time
in Verona, the city of Romeo and Juliet, and he is a little
anxious: "I am curious to see how it will go and whether I will
feel a special emotion", he said.
Meanwhile the city is ready to give the artist an official
award for his work on the 400th anniversary of the British poet
and playwright's death, to celebrate his choice to work on the
sonnets.
"I believe that the wonderful thing about Shakespeare is
that the love he writes about, between his characters, is devoid
of any type of sexuality", he said.
"In other words, although Romeo and Juliet are a man and a
woman, the way in which he writes and describes everything is so
universal and without boundaries that he could well be talking
about the story of two men, Romeo and Romeo", the artist said.
He added that there are relationships between men described
by Shakespeare that are "full of passion and deeply sexual".
"I believe that, in general, when you get to the heart of a
character, the gender doesn't matter because love, as described
by him, is devoid of sexual identity".
The songwriter also said that, in the sonnets, Shakespeare
"plays with sexual identity" - although in the end nothing
matters other than love, regardless of a person's identity and
gender.
"Rumors Festival illazioni vocali" will include a
performance by British singer Jack Savoretti on June 17 and
Italian actor and singer Neri Marcorè on June 18.
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