Rufus Wainwright’s Opera Gets (Surprisingly) Mixed Reviews

The Globe and Mail was complimentary, giving Prima Donna three stars out of four and calling the premiere ‘a thoroughly entertaining, if slightly barmy, evening.’ … In a more mixed review, Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times agrees: ‘The opera ends with a tender aria for Regine, a long-spun melody with a gentle accompaniment riff: in other words, a Wainwright song. Would that there had been more of them.’ [But] Lynne Walker of the Independent gave Prima Donna two stars out of five, and described it as a ‘flimsy plot … spun out into a cheesy piece of full-length musical theatre’.”