Created in Partnership with Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Rufus Wainwright has spent more than two decades moving between intimate singer-songwriter performances and large-scale classical works. In April 2027, he’ll bring those two sides of his career to the Sydney Opera House as part of a week-long residency with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
The residency opens with Rufus Wainwright’s Dream Requiem on Wednesday, April 7th and Thursday, April 8th, followed by Rufus Wainwright’s Want Symphonic on Saturday, April 10th and Sunday, April 11th. Both are Australian premieres.
In Dream Requiem, Wainwright sets Lord Byron’s apocalyptic poem Darkness alongside the traditional Requiem Mass, pairing a vision of a world consumed by darkness with music for the dead. The composition brings together a narrator, soprano, choir and orchestra.
Written during the pandemic, the piece brings together Wainwright’s interest in classical composition and his response to the upheaval of that period. The Sydney performances will be conducted by Benjamin Northey, with the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and Sydney Children’s Choir. The narrator and soprano are yet to be announced, leaving the question of who’ll follow in the footsteps of Meryl Streep, who narrated the work’s 2024 world premiere.
A children’s choir also featured in the world premiere, including in its climactic final moments. Looking back on the piece after its first performances, Wainwright says he initially thought its ending would be completely bleak.
“Even at the premiere, I felt I had sort of accomplished that message, leading the children off into the universe to God knows where. But that being said, about a month after the piece was premiered, I listened to it again on YouTube with sort of fresh ears, and at the end I realised that there was quite a bit of hope in there, and that it wasn’t as negative as I’d intended. So that’s a good message, I suppose, from somewhere.”
The second concert that week will see Wainwright return to the stage for Want Symphonic, with selections from Want One and Want Two — his albums released in 2003 and 2004 respectively — arranged for a 60-person orchestra.
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Wainwright says he’s surprised by how much of that music has endured.
“I am pleasantly surprised. I worked so hard to make those records, and oftentimes, in the heat of battle, you just forget about the beauty. So it’s nice that the beauty has remained.”
The new symphonic arrangements come from Sally Herbert, who has arranged strings for Florence + the Machine’s ‘My Love’ and London Grammar’s ‘Californian Soil’, and Max Moston, the violinist and arranger known for his work with Antony and the Johnsons.
Want Symphonic has previously been heard at the BBC Proms and performed with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, among other ensembles. Wainwright will perform voice and piano in Sydney, with Benjamin Northey conducting and Matthew Johnson, who played drums on Jeff Buckley’s legendary 1994 album Grace, joining the performance.
For Wainwright, Want One and Want Two were always natural candidates for an orchestral treatment.
“Of all my albums, Want One and Want Two are definitely the most compatible with an orchestra. I really wrote those out. I really produced those albums to be as big as possible, and nothing is bigger than a symphony. So it makes sense that this union has occurred.”
He also says working with an orchestra changes the way he experiences his own voice. “I think one of the things that it really teaches me is how much I imitate the cello with my voice. I really sound like a cello. So I particularly love singing with string sections because I feel like I can kind of disappear inside of them, musically.”
“I like to become part of the orchestra, and working with them has allowed me to do that,” he says.
That movement between pop and classical has become a defining part of Wainwright’s career. Alongside his albums and live work, he has written the operas Prima Donna and Hadrian, as well as Dream Requiem.
Rather than seeing those different forms as competing parts of his career, Wainwright says he moves between them according to what interests him.
“I tend to operate on a kind of hunger scale, meaning I will devour what interests me next. So if I’m away from pop for a long time, I’ll get my appetite back and return to it, and vice versa with classical. So it’s basically about starvation in a lot of ways,” he says.
Two decades on, he views the artist who made Want One and Want Two differently.
“I think I recognise a lot of confidence and a lot of kind of bravado, which I think at that age was really important because I was struggling with addiction and becoming a responsible human being, or trying to.”
“Now I think I’m a lot more frail, actually, and kind of emotionally vulnerable, which is ironic. You think that as you get older, you get tougher, but the opposite actually occurs,” he says.
Whatever the form, he says the emotional core stays the same. “At the centre of any of my work, even my classical work, where I’m not even performing, there has to be a truthful message coming from a very emotional and true place. So I always try to do that.”
Tickets for Dream Requiem (Wednesday, April 7th and Thursday, April 8th) and Want Symphonic (Saturday, April 10th and Sunday, April 11th, 2027) at the Sydney Opera House are on sale now.
