Rufus Wainwright has had a tough year and there is no doubt you will get a full musical rendition of his sorrows and joys if you see him play in Christchurch, Wellington or Auckland later this month. Wainwright cancelled his planned New Zealand tour earlier in the year when his much-loved mother, musician Kate McGarrigle, lost her battle with cancer. "It has been a very tough year. But in certain ways it's also been very fulfilling," Wainwright tells GayNZ.com. "Mostly because my sister Martha had a wonderful baby Arcangelo so we have this new life to dote on. And also with my mother's passing, we wish it had never happened, but I would qualify it as a good death. And I was able to be really present and around and I do consider it a blessing that I was able to help her. So you know, you have to look on the positive at the end of the day." Wainwright has been through a lot in the past few years and unlike most musicians, he has done it incredibly publicly. "I have to admit I'm not one to edit my life for anyone," he explains. "I am one who tends to like to converse and analyse and philosophise about life's triumphs and tribulations. So I'm very open about all that stuff. And it does come out as a lot. But then again I think I'm also one of the most, kind of, opaque personalities so it comes off as that. But it's also because I enjoy talking about it and maybe that helps me get through it as well." Anyone who has seen him in concert knows he is a spectacular performer who goes through a journey onstage, from wild theatrical numbers to heartwrenching ballads. He says 'the bottom line of his oeuvre' is a sadness which drives more towards the morose. "So I do see it as necessary when I get onstage to not totally wallow in that all the time and to give the audience a variation." His show for his New Zealand tour this month will be "very dark", particularly the first half where he performs his new album All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu. Lulu stems from the character from Pandora's Box played by Louise Brooks. "But I think for the listener, or the dreamer shall we say, it's the idea of decadence and seduction wrapped up in a pretty little package," he explains. "That you know you want to open but really shouldn't. It's something that I've experienced a lot recently, especially with my mother's passing and working so much. There's a certain moment where in the corner of my eye I see this phantom appear in the form of Louise Brooks, who kind of beckons me forth and says 'just throw everything out the window and come with me and we'll dance the night away. And it's a vision I cherish, it's an idea that I lust after – but on the other hand I know better and I find that it's good to kind of personify it and acknowledge it and even worship it in a sense, because it's part of life. And you're only as sick as your secrets, as they say," he chuckles, "so once again get it out there. So you know where it is." In the show he asks audiences not to applaud as he plays All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu. "And yes it's very sad and very depressing and so forth. But then what's great about it is that in the second half I come out and do an old fashioned Rufus Wainwright show with jokes and so forth and it gives a certain fullness to the evening without betraying my inner dark demons," he laughs. So how does he switch from intensity to fun at half-time? "I wipe off my Dracula make-up, put on my white shoes and go out there and let the music do its magic." "I feel it necessary personally to go through this gamut of emotions in my career. I never understood, when I was Hollywood or later in New York, when I would go to pop shows and it was just this uniform mono-emotional kind of idea. Just attempted hit after attempted hit. And I don't know, I really like peaks and valleys, so I do it for myself I guess in the end." Wainwright agrees this possibly makes him more of a performer than just a musician, saying he was always a big movie fan and old time Vaudevillian wannabe. "I need all my colours, all my paints and all my colours. Too bad I can't tap dance. But that might get a little ridiculous." He would love to go back to pop for his next album "and when I say pop there's always a little bit of a question mark or parenthesis, I don't know, but I would like to attempt some sort of radio-friendly venture for my next project. Just to lighten it up a bit and shake my booty – what's left of it," he laughs. "But then I'll probably bounce back to you know, Hades." Wainwright is living a quieter life these days. He is shacked up with his boyfriend in a place by the beach in New York. The idea of getting married has even come up. "What I go through living in the United States is 'what does this marriage mean? Technically what will we gain from it?' And I very much ask this question because by boyfriend is European and it would be great if he could get American citizenship at some point. But I do wonder about the logistics of it all and perhaps it will happen." He says he believes in the concept and the right to marry, which he feels is about equality and human rights. "But I also have a fondness for old fashioned gay mysticism and this reckless freedom that we inhabited occasionally in the past. And I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater either." Jacqui Stanford - 14th October 2010