Rufus Wainwright is a singer, songwriter and composer
Stories: Verdi’s influence on my Dream Requiem
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Dream Requiem is dedicated to two lost souls: Giuseppe Verdi and Puccini. The former dedication is fairly direct, the latter not so much so.
Let’s begin with the first.
Verdi will always be my favorite composer. This is mainly because many years ago in our family home in Saint-Sauveur-des-Monts, Quebec, nestled between my mother Kate and aunt Anna, my whole life suddenly changed while listening to his The Messa de Requiem for the first time in full (on cassette tape, no less) at the tender age of 13.
Upon hearing the opening few chords and then the haunted chorus whisper ‘requiem aeternam’, I was instantly transfixed and ultimately transformed into a true opera maniac. The very next day, with the little allowance I had, I returned to the city and dutifully scoured Montreal for great recordings that could afford me a deeper understanding of this strange newfound musical world of extreme singing, length, dynamics, and, above all, extreme drama.
In many ways Verdi’s Requiem was the perfect introduction both compositionally and spiritually to the vast new territory that was to become the rest of my life. The experience both represented the death of my childhood innocence and the birth and awakening of my artistic self. Thus began my personal lifelong spiritual quest to seek out beauty no matter what the cost, for better or for worse, and I very much have Giuseppe Verdi and his Requiem to thank for this incredible journey.
Now the second dedication: Puccini. This one’s a bit more of a surprise.
I’m a huge fan of the Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini as well, and in many ways, he was just as inspirational as the aforementioned forefather in my early operatic journey. But alas, this dedication is not to him (sorry Giacomo). In fact, it is to a beloved little dog of the same name (minus the Giacomo) who was tragically killed when he was a mere 18 weeks old during an encounter – during Covid – with another, larger dog. He was a beautiful little puppy. It was awful.
Anyway, let’s not dwell on this experience but instead connect these two dedications to the work at hand, my very own requiem, the Dream Requiem.
Verdi’s death mass is considered the monolithic composition that transformed him into a deeper and thus truly great composer, in other words, there’s pre- and post-Requiem Verdi. I very much had this transformation in mind when I composed mine. I’m not a very religious person and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t either, but no matter what one’s leanings are, as an artist, when dealing with a strong and ancient sacred text revolving around death, you kinda have to go there. This I humbly believe happened.
Be it turning 50 and my final earthly landscape beginning to form on the horizon, my latent Catholic upbringing that, though not strict, was still incredibly impactful, or just the fact that this ain’t my first time at the rodeo, many strong forces converged in the composition of this piece. Not once was I lacking in a sense of direction.
Here, we must slip in a third major character, the immeasurably grand poet Lord Byron and his incredible poem Darkness from 1816. Darkness is an imagined dream about total planetary ecological collapse. Sadly, it very much correlates to the world we live in today and the unimaginable natural disasters we will soon have to contend with. But besides all this apocalyptic doom, at the center of the poem there is a theme that both Byron, myself, and myriads of others hold very close to their hearts: the pure and unadulterated love of dogs towards their masters.
This mass has many hearts that burst and expire throughout its dark musical journey: humanity, Christ, the environment, light, but to name a few. In fact, in the poem every single living thing dies except for the vast Universe. But the passage that I believe is the most touching is when the faithful dog that would not assail its dead master dies, thus “licking the hand. Which answer’d not with a caress” before expiring. It’s a magnificently sad moment that I really had to rein in and, in order to do so, I envisioned our lost little puppy, Puccini. Thanks to his memory, I think I pulled it off.
Now, finally, even if you are not a dog lover, the fact remains that if one truly considers what we force animals in general to endure on this planet, without a doubt, there is no purer – and at the same time more paradoxical – love than that of these creatures for humans. They should have turned on us long ago. But I guess that in the end we are all just creatures as well, searching for light amid the darkness of the heavens, where all music and, certainly, the souls of faithful dogs abound.
