Rufus Wainwright

“Dream Requiem” is the amalgamation of two musical and creative ideas, which developed side by side for a long time and which were brought together during the singular dramatic experience of the Covid 19 pandemic which brought the world to a standstill. stop. Rufus's fascination with the Requiem form dates back to his early adolescence, when he first heard Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem, which transformed him as a human being and showed him an artistic path that he could pursue. He used opera as a secret weapon in his pop music and later wrote two operas, Prima Donna and Hadrian. Writing a Requiem in the time of Covid seemed like both a very thought-provoking and incredibly appropriate idea. A Requiem for the people we have lost in this crisis, for the past from which we are cut off and for the future to which we do not yet know how to connect, a Requiem for the human contact, the solidarity and the human voice that are all become dangerous and contagious during the pandemic. Reflecting on the recent increase in natural disasters and environmental collapse, Wainwright weaves together Byron's apocalyptic poem "Darkness," written after the volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora in 1915, which brought about "the year without summer", throughout the text of the requiem mass in Latin.