Rufus Wainwright: Dream Requiem

• Time:

  • Tue 18.8.2026 19:00

  • Duration: approx. 75 min

• Address:

  Helsinki Music Centre, Concert Hall
  Mannerheimintie 13 A
  00100 Helsinki

• Tickets:

  39–95 / 31,2–85,5 € (Musiikkitalo)

  Get tickets

Event Introduction

The 2026 Helsinki Festival opens in grand fashion with Rufus Wainwright’s major work Dream Requiem. Wainwright’s moving requiem for choir, orchestra, soprano and narrator premiered in Paris in 2024. At Helsinki Festival, the work will be performed by Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Dalia Stasevska, actor Laura Birn, soprano Anna Prohaska and the Key Ensemble choir.

Wainwright composed the work during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when human tragedy at moments felt overwhelming. At the same time, wildfires raged across the world. Wainwright wrote the requiem for the people who were lost, for the past we have detached from, and for a future we do not yet know. At the same time, the piece is an ode to touch, togetherness and the human voice – all that became dangerous during the pandemic. In the text of Dream Requiem, Lord Byron’s stark poem Darkness intertwines with the Latin Requiem Mass.

The requiem form has been important to Wainwright since his teenage years, when he first heard Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem. The themes of the mass for the dead have always been present in Wainwright’s brilliant and beloved pop music, and he has also composed two operas.

At the Paris premiere of Dream Requiem, the role of the narrator was performed by the legendary actor Meryl Streep, and the work was conducted by Mikko Franck. Since then, the piece has received an ecstatic reception in Barcelona, Amsterdam, Hamburg and Los Angeles. Helsinki Festival and Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra are among the work’s commissioners.

Rufus Wainwright will also appear at the festival in a solo concert at Huvila on the Night of the Arts, 20 August 2026.

Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra
Dalia Stasevska, conductor

Key Ensemble
Jutta Seppinen, choir director

Laura Birn, narrator
Anna Prohaska, soprano

Commissioned by:
Radio France, Royal Ballet, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Palau de la Musica Catalana Barcelona, Auditori de Barcelona, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Helsinki Festival, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra.

“It does shine a light on the capabilities of the form and the power of a Requiem to move listeners.”
BBC Music

“It was such a triumph.” (..)  “The audience went berserk.”
Symphony Magazine

”There’s a real sense of a special occasion about it all.”
The Guardian“

Nothing less than the rumbling embodiment of loss that was COVID.”

Flood Magazine

Categories

Classical and Contemporary Music

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