LONDON - Over the last couple of years, Rufus Wainwright staged his first opera while also penning a batch of emotionally charged tunes that appear on his latest album, "All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu."

It was a lot to accomplish. But it was made even more difficult with the illness of his mother, folk singer Kate McGarrigle, who died earlier this year at 63.

Wainwright said his mother's bout with cancer is reflected in the themes of his new CD, which was released last month.

"'All Days Are Nights' is a way of explaining the upside down nature of time, really -- when you're under a lot of stress and how that's the first thing to go. You could be in a hospital room, it doesn't matter what time it is outside. It's just you're there at that moment and that's all that matters," he said. "It's the same way with theater too; you're in a darkened theater where the outside world is obliterated in a positive way."

Wainwright spoke to The Associated Press this month about the other inspirations behind the album, his longing for a pop hit and his fascination with Lady Gaga.

AP: You put some Shakespearean sonnets to music. What was the reasoning behind that?

Wainwright: One of them is my favorite. Sonnet 20, the first line is "a woman's face with nature's own hand painted," and it's one of the really seminal creations dealing with homoeroticism and androgyny, and sexual politics in a lot of ways, from 400 years ago. So that one I adore. And the other two, they're quite good too, those poems.

AP: What made you want to write your own opera, "Prima Donna"?

Wainwright: It really is a kind of homage to my love of the art form, and to my first foray into that universe, which is a pretty big step to take. Anyway, the establishment, meaning the critics ... love it, but there's another pretty solid group that are very, very upset that I'm writing something musical. They find it sacrilegious to try and make something that people can hum, so I'm just running into a lot of realities when you really go into the classical world. It's a very demanding, very difficult, very rigid place and I am certainly not like that myself. I mean, look at my hair! So yes, it's a journey.

AP: You've worked across a lot of different genres and mediums. Have you ever just wanted to stop and focus on one?

Wainwright: At this point I have laid out the field and I have a choice. I can go down the opera road, I can go down the pop road. I'd also like to try writing a musical at some point. I think that with opera, the next time I write one I will have to do that. I will have to put everything on the back burner and give myself a good five years to just slog through it, because it is a lot of work and you just want to get better. I think with pop, I'm dying to have a big pop hit now too after all this tuning. I have a new found respect for the creative juice that the pop world offers and how much fun it is.

AP: What do you think of the state of the music industry at the moment?

Wainwright: I talk a lot about Lady Gaga, like everybody is these days; in fact I dubbed myself Sir Gugu the other day. I'm certainly fascinated by her meteoric rise and impressed by ... her musical ability; she knows what she's doing. I do miss a kind of vulnerability though I think she has that she's just really afraid to show it. But perhaps, I'm always more of a fan of somewhat more wretched, uncontrolled performers who are who they have to be without trying to be that. You don't see that as much as you used to. So I guess that's what I'm trying to be.

AP: What do you do to kick back and relax?

Wainwright: Well, I don't get to see my boyfriend very much, Bjorn, so whenever I can I like to see him. We just bought a house out by the sea in America, in Montauk, N.Y. So we basically try not to eat fried food, out there, out by the seaside. And romantic walks on the beach, and shopping for antiques. We're so gay.

AP: You've recently become an uncle; do you have any plans to start your own family?

Wainwright: I'm definitely at the age. I'm 37 and I have a lot of girlfriends out there who are really starting to climb the walls a little bit. And I'm cute, so there's talk occasionally. I have to be honest too: Everyone in my family's a musician and is very good. My sister's amazing (Martha Wainwright), my father (Loudon Wainwright III) and my mother was amazing, and I have another sister, Lucy Wainwright Roach, who's incredible. So there's definitely a good gene pool here and I've gotten some offers.