Rufus Wainwright - Take All My Loves: 9 Shakespeare Sonnets (2016)
夺掉我的爱 - 九首莎士比亚十四行诗
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) 莎士比亚
Genre: Classical Crossover, Classical
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Year: 22 Apr 2016
为纪念莎士比亚逝世400周年,著名流行音乐人鲁弗斯·韦恩莱特在2016年4月22日,由DG发行《TAKE ALL MY LOVES》。这张专辑标志着鲁弗斯和著名电影配乐作曲家Marius de Vries继《Want》专辑之后的首次合作(Marius代表作包括《红磨坊》和1996年莱昂纳多主演的《罗密欧与朱丽叶》)。
It’s hard to imagine how someone whose last album was an opera could out-do themselves, but Rufus Wainwright has achieved just that with Take All My Loves: 9 Shakespeare Sonnets, to be released via Deutsche Gramophon on April 22, 400 years after William Shakespeare’s death.
Wainwright has a history with the Bard’s sonnets: The San Francisco Symphony commissioned Wainwright to orchestrate five sonnets, and the singer-songwriter also composed music for playwright and director Robert Wilson’s Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Wainwright’s 2010 album, All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu, included three of these, including “A Woman’s Face”. Rather than stick exclusively to his symphonic and theatrical sonnet ties, Wainwright returned to other old collaborators. Marius De Vries, the producer of Wainwright’s Want One and Want Two albums over a decade ago, collaborates on this new album, which largely pairs gilded orchestral pieces with readings by guests including Helena Bonham Carter, Carrie Fisher, and William Shatner.
Two interpretations of “A Woman’s Face” demarcate the album’s 16 tracks — a “pop” version done by Wainwright and an operatic version by Austrian coloratura soprano Anna Prohaska, who sings four other tracks on the album. Both are gorgeous, but the source material suggests interesting interpretations. Sonnet 20, lyrically written in the voice of a man, essentially translates to, “You’ve got the good looks of a handsome man, but you attract both women and men. But since nature gave you a dick, I’ll keep your love and women will enjoy your body.” Four hundred years later, this sort of complex feeling remains relevant, demonstrating how beauty is a fine, genderless line, and that grappling with sexuality is futile.
Another enduring message drives tracks 11 and 12 from Sonnet 129, linking to our current age of Tinder and online dating, proclaiming that sex is a way of squandering vital energy. People go to absurd lengths in its pursuit, only to disproportionately hate it once they’ve had it because it drives them crazy. They’re extreme when pursuing sex, extreme when having it, and extreme once it’s over. While you’re anticipating it, it seems like a joy; afterward, like a bad dream. Recited by William Shatner and sung by Prohaska, the melody builds into a wild, dissonant stair-stepping, like an Arnold Schoenberg composition, ricocheting between the highs and lows experienced by someone with a dynamic sex life.
A similar discord arises between the lines of “Unperfect Actor (Sonnet 23)”, except the drama is formed from Bonham Carter’s breathless recitation, Fiora Cutler and Martha Wainwright’s piercing vocal duties, and the quartal and quintal harmonies between the lead melody and a lot of noise. It falls somewhere between Robert Fripp’s guitar work and the audiovisual scheme of Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Tarkus, sonically steamrolling every other track on this album. A close second is Sonnet 40, which sounds like a marriage between orchestral instruments and synthesizers inside of a Rube Goldberg machine - each little mechanical tick occurring in sequence, until the whole thing becomes a busy, whirring fever dream of someone in pursuit of love. And if anyone can sell that complex, theatrical, beautiful depiction of humanity’s deepest emotions, it’s Wainwright.
Tracks:
01. Siân Phillips – Sonnet 43 (1:12) 莎士比亚十四行诗第43首
02. Anna Prohaska – When Most I Wink (Sonnet 43) (4:55)
我眼睛闭得最紧(莎士比亚十四行诗第43首)
03. Rufus Wainwright & Marius de Vries – Take All My Loves (Sonnet 40) (6:26)
夺掉我的爱(莎士比亚十四行诗第40首)
04. Frally Hynes – Sonnet 20 (0:51) 莎士比亚十四行诗第20首
05. Anna Prohaska – A Woman’s Face (Sonnet 20) (3:49)
你有副女人的脸(莎士比亚十四行诗第20首)
06. Anna Prohaska – For Shame (Sonnet 10) (3:12) 莎士比亚十四行诗第10首
07. Peter Eyre – Sonnet 10 (0:58) 羞呀(莎士比亚十四行诗第10首)
08. Helena Bonham Carter, Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright & Fiora Cutler – Unperfect Actor (Sonnet 23) (5:45)
初次演出的戏子(莎士比亚十四行诗第23首)
09. Carrie Fisher – Sonnet 29 (1:01) 莎士比亚十四行诗第29首
10. Florence Welch – When in Disgrace With Fortune and Men’s Eyes (Sonnet 29) (3:08)
当我受尽命运和人们的白眼(莎士比亚十四行诗第29首)
11. William Shatner – Sonnet 129 (1:03) 莎士比亚十四行诗第129首
12. Anna Prohaska – Th’Expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame (Sonnet 129) (2:48)
把精力消耗在耻辱的沙漠里(莎士比亚十四行诗第129首)
13. Jürgen Holtz, Rufus Wainwright & Christopher Nell – All dessen müd (Sonnet 66) (8:22)
厌了这一切(莎士比亚十四行诗第66首)
14. Rufus Wainwright – A Woman’s Face - Reprise (Sonnet 20) (3:10)
你有副女人的脸 - 重奏(莎士比亚十四行诗第20首)
15. Inge Keller – Sonnet 87 (1:17) 莎士比亚十四行诗第87首
16. Anna Prohaska – Farewell (Sonnet 87) (6:27) 再会吧!(莎士比亚十四行诗第87首)
When most I wink then do mine eyes best see,
For all the day they view things unrespected,
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
Then thou whose shadow shadows doth make bright
How would thy shadow's form, form happy show,
To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!
How would (I say) mine eyes be blessed made,
By looking on thee in the living day,
When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade,
Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!
All days are nights to see till I see thee,
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.
Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all,
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call,
All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more:
Then if for my love, thou my love receivest,
I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest,
But yet be blamed, if thou thy self deceivest
By wilful taste of what thy self refusest.
I do forgive thy robbery gentle thief
Although thou steal thee all my poverty:
And yet love knows it is a greater grief
To bear greater wrong, than hate's known injury.
Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,
Kill me with spites yet we must not be foes.
======
20
A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,
Hast thou the master mistress of my passion,
A woman's gentle heart but not acquainted
With shifting change as is false women's fashion,
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling:
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth,
A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created,
Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she pricked thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.
10
For shame deny that thou bear'st love to any
Who for thy self art so unprovident.
Grant if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,
But that thou none lov'st is most evident:
For thou art so possessed with murd'rous hate,
That 'gainst thy self thou stick'st not to conspire,
Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate
Which to repair should be thy chief desire:
O change thy thought, that I may change my mind,
Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?
Be as thy presence is gracious and kind,
Or to thy self at least kind-hearted prove,
Make thee another self for love of me,
That beauty still may live in thine or thee.
AS an unperfect actor on the stage,
Who with his fear is put besides his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart;
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love's rite,
And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,
O'ercharged with burden of mine own love's might.
O, let my books be then the eloquence
And dump presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
More than that tongue that more hath more expressed.
O, learn to read what silent love hath writ:
To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.
WHEN, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friend's possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love rememb'red such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action, and till action, lust
Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad.
Mad in pursuit and in possession so,
Had, having, and in quest, to have extreme,
A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe,
Before a joy proposed behind a dream.
All this the world well knows yet none knows well,
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
Tired with all these for restful death I cry,
As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill.
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that to die, I leave my love alone.
Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know'st thy estimate,
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing:
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting,
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thy self thou gav'st, thy own worth then not knowing,
Or me to whom thou gav'st it, else mistaking,
So thy great gift upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgement making.
Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter,
In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.