Belfast Tempest

Before yesterday’s lecture, I got chatting with a man who was very excited about the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, which will be marked in April. One of the reasons I go to events like this are the interesting people you meet.

So cities around the world are putting on events as part of Shakespeare 400. Belfast is putting on The Tempest with a cast of 250 actors. The play will be staged inside a huge shipyard warehouse, where bleachers will be set up and people will be invited to sit on rafts. They are recreating the Globe experience, with theatre in the round.

The gentleman also shared that Rufus Wainwright is a big fan of Shakespeare and has set his sonnets to music. Here’s a newspaper clip:

Rufus Wainwright will celebrate the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death in typically dramatic fashion by releasing a collection of nine sonnets in performances by actors and vocalists.

Take All My Loves: 9 Shakespeare Sonnets will be issued on April 22 on Deutsche Grammophon with contributions from Florence Welch, Anna Prohaska, Rufus and his sister Martha Wainwright, Helena Bonham Carter, Dame Siân Phillips, Carrie Fisher and William Shatner.

The album marks the first collaboration between 42-year-old Rufus and Marius de Vries since they co-produced Wainwright's epic Want albums. The seeds were sown in 2009, when director Robert Wilson asked Rufus to compose music for his Shakespeare’s Sonnets production, first staged at the Berliner Ensemble.

"For me, recording this album has been a marriage made in heaven, as it combines my love of classical music with my love of pop music,’ says Rufus. "It’s literally historically fun and made all the better by working again with Marius.”
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