When the Palau de la Música Catalana announced the premiere in Spain of Rufus Wainwright's concert Dream Requiem, on January 25th of next year, the big question was whether Meryl Streep herself would actually attend as the narrator. The Hollywood icon lent her voice for the premiere of this musical creation on June 14th in Paris, at the headquarters of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. Mikko Franck was conducting, with Anna Prohaska as the solo soprano. This led to a recording that will be released on January 17th... A week before the highly anticipated arrival of the project in Barcelona. The excitement was only growing... Who would lend their voice on this occasion, alongside the OBC and the Orfeó Català?
The Palau has just made public the announcement: Sharon Stone, no less, will be the one narrating this requiem, the result of a joint commission from the main cultural institutions of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe (including the Philharmonique Radio France, Helsinki, the Royal Opera House in London...), which was written during the pandemic. A requiem that, according to Wainwright himself, is “for the people we have lost in this crisis, for the past from which we are isolated, and for the future to which we still do not know how to connect, a requiem for human contact, solidarity, and the human voice that have become dangerous and contagious.”
Sharon and I have known each other for a long time; I have been a fan of hers long before she knew my music”
“Sharon and I have known each other for a long time,” the American composer and performer declared. “As it could not be otherwise, I have been a fan of hers long before she knew my music. She is one of the most fascinating, brilliant, intelligent, and inspiring women I know. I have wanted to collaborate with her for a long time, and having her take on the role of narrator, giving voice to Byron's poem Darkness about total ecological collapse, with her incisive and moving voice, is a dream come true for me. And for this to happen in Barcelona, one of the cities where I have felt most welcomed as a musician, and at the Palau, which is one of the most beautiful and impressive concert halls in the world, is the icing on the cake.”
Rufus Wainwright and Meryl Streep in New York, in a photo taken in 2010
The iconic Stone, who rocked the foundations of American cinema by starring in Basic Instinct decades ago, will tap into other instincts to embody this reflection on environmental collapse, as her text combines words from the Requiem Mass in Latin with the aforementioned apocalyptic poem Darkness, an imagined dream about the total ecological collapse of the planet written after the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1915, which darkened the skies worldwide and led to the “year without a summer.”
Actress, producer, and humanitarian agent, the actress who resides in Los Angeles with her three children, Stone has also become a prolific artist as a painter. And the Barcelona audience will have the opportunity to perceive her in the flesh, thanks on this occasion, to music.
