Rufus Wainwright
Dream Requiem
WARNER CLASSICS
Having penned two operas (Prima Donna, Hadrian), one stage musical (Opening Night), and one song that borrowed heavily from the liturgical luster traditions of the Latin Mass (“Agnus Dei”), how far off could an actual requiem have been for Rufus Wainwright? Adapting the melodic structure of “Agnus Dei” into something fresh and wild in dedication to the smoldering spirits of Verdi and Puccini and the bleak words of Byron (whose poem “Darkness” focuses on a centuries-old volcanic eruption, a “year without a summer”), Wainwright’s Dream Requiem is nothing less than the rumbling embodiment of loss that was COVID, LA’s recent wildfires, the disintegration of humanity caused by social media and AI, and the already-incendiary reign of our 47th president.
Recorded with Mikko Franck conducting and Meryl Streep speaking Bryon’s words, along with soprano soloist Anna Prohaska and the French Radio Chorus, Wainwright’s blood-red-to-black dirge attacks you like a dense, flame-throwing vacuum hotly sucking the air out of the room with its cranked-up textural orchestral bombast balanced against moments of beautiful, airy clarity. OK, maybe there isn’t quite enough air being added to this complex, dark epic, but the bits of simplicity and porousness that stream through the din are welcome, and quickly noticeable.
Rather than arriving with Wainwright’s usual melodic brand of charming-to-chuffed chamber pop and vine-ripened folk music, Dream Requiem’s mix of massive chorale vocals and quieter solo soprano (to say nothing of its trembling descending chord passages sans human voice) doomily portrays death’s gutting solitude. The charm, then, comes from the “cracks in everything” allowing the light to pass through what Wainwright’s daughter’s grandfather, Leonard Cohen, spoke of in “Anthem”—its thin, reedy strains of illuminated uplift and energy that make the dark radiate even hotter to the touch.
