Rufus Wainright rows with the Met

Rufus Wainright (pictured), the singer-songwriter, has got himself embroiled in a fearsome row with New York's Metropolitan Opera. Two years ago the Met commissioned an opera from Wainright but stipulated that it must be in English. When the project was announced, the Met's manager Peter Gelb told the New York Times: "Presenting a new opera that is not in English at the Met when it could be in English is an immediate impediment to its potential success."

But Wainwright, who is half-American and half-Canadian, raised in Francophone Montreal, has written most of the libretto for Prima Donna – about a day in the life of an ageing opera star in 1970s Paris – in French. And he's refusing to translate it, so the Met has dropped the whole idea. News of the project’s demise reached France yesterday, with Liberation newspaper describing it as a "sad declaration for our national language".