Rufus Wainwright: Dream Requiem

“Dream Requiem” is the amalgamation of two musical and creative ideas that have been developing side by side for a long time and brought together singularly dramatic experience of the Covid 19 pandemic shutting down the world. Rufus Wainwrights' fascination with the form of the Requiem has been going back to early teenage days where he heard Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem for the first time and was transformed as a human being and shown an artistic path that he could follow into his future. He used opera as his secret weapon in his pop music and later wrote two operas, Prima Donna and Hadrian. To write a Requiem during the time of Covid seemed like a very challenging but at the same time 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 which we do not yet know how to connect to, a Requiem for the human touch, togetherness and the human voice which all had become dangerous and contagious during the pandemic.