"The Cult of the Diva" – Rufus Wainwright as Opera Queen

Abstract

The music of Rufus Wainwright has been afforded much critical acclaim thanks to the singer-songwriter’s understanding of Queer cultural history, and the candor with which he explores (homo)sexuality in his music. This case study seeks to examine his use of opera in particular, and how Wainwright uses the historical trope of the opera queen to incorporate his own queerness into music, thus asserting an authority of difference and challenging the dominant (hetero)norm constructions of masculinity in popular music. Wainwright disregards any cultural framework imposed by heternormativism, and reclaims the Orphic figure of operatic authority as one of queer power through this absence. By drawing on his own relationship with opera, Wainwright exploits the right this gives him by reinterpreting cultural history, and revising the pejorative stereotype that is an opera queen.

Keywords

• heteronormativism
• identity
• masculinity
• opera
• diva
• Eurydice