ÍøÆغÚÁÏ

Rufus Wainwright is a Juno-winning, Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter whose lush, theatrical pop harks back to the traditions of Tin Pan Alley, cabaret, and even opera. He emerged with his acclaimed self-titled debut in 1998. Quickly rising from club residencies to international headliner status, his fifth studio album, 2007's Release the Stars, became his most commercially successful to date, with a reach that included the Top 30 of the Billboard 200 and as high as the Top Five in the U.K. and Norway. Demonstrating his appreciation for the vocal era as well as for her standing as a gay icon, he delivered the Judy Garland tribute Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall -- his first live album -- that same year. Challenging his composing and arranging skills, he premiered his first opera, Prima Donna, in 2009 (a recording followed in 2015), and 2016's Take All My Loves: 9 Shakespeare Sonnets set select poems to Wainwright's music. It included such esteemed guests as Helena Bonham Carter, Carrie Fisher, and Florence + the Machine's Florence Welch. He returned with his first pop album in eight years, Unfollow the Rules, in 2020. Underscoring his broad artistry, Wainwright embraced his family's folk roots on 2023's star-studded Folkocracy, before fusing Verdi's "Requiem" and Byron's poem "Darkness" on his ambitious classical work Dream Requiem, which found him joined by Meryl Streep, Anna Prohaska, and the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France conducted by Mikko Franck.

Rufus McGarrigle Wainwright was born in New York's Hudson Valley in 1973. The son of folk music luminaries Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle, his parents divorced while he was a child, and he was raised by his mother in Montreal. Beginning his piano studies at age six, by 13 he was touring with his mother, aunt Anna, and his sister Martha in a group billed as the McGarrigle Sisters and Family. A year later, Wainwright was nominated for a Juno for Most Promising Young Artist, while his "I'm A-Runnin'" was concurrently nominated for a Genie for Best Song in a Film (1988's Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller).

Coming out as gay while still in his teens, Wainwright sought solace in opera throughout his adolescent years, also becoming an enormous fan of performers including Édith Piaf, Al Jolson, and Judy Garland. After attending the prestigious Millbrook School in upstate New York, he briefly studied music at Montreal's McGill University, eventually turning away from classical performance and toward pop and rock. Becoming a fixture on the Montreal club circuit, Wainwright soon cut a series of demos with producer Pierre Marchand. Loudon Wainwright III then passed a copy of the tape to friend Van Dyke Parks, who in turn handed it on to DreamWorks exec Lenny Waronker. The label signed him not long after, resulting in the release of Rufus Wainwright in May of 1998. Co-produced by Marchand and Jon Brion, the album landed on several critics' "Best of 1998" lists and collected the Juno Award for Best Alternative Album. Wainwright spent the next few years touring and appearing sporadically on soundtracks (Shrek) and compilations (The McGarrigle Hour). His sophomore album, Poses, brought similar acclaim in mid-2001, including earning him a second Juno in the alternative category.

After spending much of 2001 and 2002 touring on his own and with Tori Amos, Wainwright settled into Bearsville Studio in Woodstock, New York, with producer Marius de Vries to record a sort of double album. The first project, Want One, was released in September 2003, with Want Two following a year later. In 2007, he issued both Release the Stars and Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall, a restaging of Garland's legendary Judy at Carnegie Hall performance from 1961. Release the Stars went to number 23 on the Billboard 200 and to number two on the album chart in the U.K., both career highs. Early in 2009, the Carnegie Hall album resulted in Wainwright's first Grammy nomination, in the category of Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album.

In 2010, Wainwright presented his sixth studio album, the stripped-down All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu, a 12-track, Shakespeare-influenced collection of original material that relied almost solely on the artist's voice and piano. The following year, the musician embarked on his seventh album with the intention of returning to the ornate pop of his early days. The resulting Out of the Game, which was produced by Mark Ronson (Amy Winehouse, Adele), arrived in May 2012. It was followed by the concert album Live from the Artist's Den and the collection Vibrate: The Best of Rufus Wainwright, both in 2014.

A recording of his debut opera, the French-language Prima Donna, was released by Deutsche Grammophon in 2015. The label also put out his next studio album, Take All My Loves: 9 Shakespeare Sonnets, the following April. Three of the musical sonnets had appeared on Songs for Lulu but were reworked for Take All My Loves, which commemorated the 400th anniversary of the Bard's death. Its many guests included several film actors, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and singers spanning soprano Anna Prohaska and his sister, Martha. In 2020, Wainwright returned to singer/songwriter pop with the Mitchell Froom-produced Unfollow the Rules. His debut for the BMG label, its contributors included guitarist Blake Mills and drummers Matt Chamberlain and Jim Keltner, the latter of whom had appeared on his first album. The next year's Unfollow the Rules: The Paramour Session captured a 2020 performance at the Paramour Mansion in Los Angeles that included two previously unreleased songs. Highlights from another concert livestream, Rufus Does Judy at Capitol Studios, followed on BMG in 2022. With Academy Award-winning actress Renée Zellweger as the only in-person audience member, it revisited Garland's Judy at Carnegie Hall album, this time with only a four-piece jazz combo and a guest spot by Kristin Chenoweth.

His next long-player, Folkocracy, was a star-studded set of broadly defined folk covers, including many traditional songs. Produced by and conceived with Froom, and released on BMG in June 2023, its numerous guests included John Legend, Brandi Carlile, and David Byrne as well as several family members. The following year, he returned to the world of classical music for his extended work, Dream Requiem. Released in January 2025, the piece found Wainwright bringing together Giuseppe Verdi's "Requiem" with Lord Byron's poem "Darkness." Recorded live at Auditorium de Radio France in Paris, it featured soprano Anna Prohaska, the Chœur de Radio France, and the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France conducted by Mikko Franck, along with narration by Meryl Streep. ~ Jason Ankeny & Marcy Donelson

Anna Prohaska has drawn comparisons with Anna Netrebko and other leading sopranos owing to the beauty, warmth, and power of her voice. Indeed, critics noted the ravishing character of Prohaska's tone, from its secure and potent upper notes to its dark middle register and her seemingly effortless manner of delivery. She sings an extensive range of operatic roles, and her concert and recital repertoire is equally broad. In 2024, Prohaska was heard on a recording of George Benjamin's opera Picture a day like this and was named the Opus Klassik Female Singer of the Year.

Prohaska was born into a musical family in Neu-Ulm, Germany, in 1983. Her great-grandfather, Carl Prohaska, was a respected composer, and her grandfather was conductor Felix Prohaska; her mother and her brother, Daniel, are singers, and her father was an opera director. Raised in Vienna, Anna began piano and ballet lessons at age six. At 11, she and her family moved to Berlin, and she began vocal studies at 14 with conductor Eberhard Kloke. At the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler, she continued vocal studies with Brenda Mitchell, Norma Sharp, and Wolfram Rieger. Prohaska was busy during her student years on the concert stage, making her first professional appearances at 16 at the North-Rhine Westphalia and Potsdam music festivals. In 2002, she debuted at the Komische Oper Berlin as Flora in Britten's The Turn of The Screw. Prohaska had further training at the Aix-en-Provence Festival's Académie Européenne de Musique in 2003 and later on at the International Handel Academy Karlsruhe.

Prohaska appeared at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (Berlin State Opera) in 2005 in the premiere of Seven Attempted Escapes from Silence, a contemporary opera fashioned by seven different composers and librettist Jonathan Safran Foer, author of the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. In 2006, Prohaska sang Frasquita in a Barenboim-led performance of Bizet's Carmen at the Berlin State Opera, and the following year, she became a member of the company. Since 2007, Prohaska has appeared regularly with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2008, Prohaska debuted as the First Wood Nymph at the Salzburg Festival under Franz Welser-Möst in Dvorák's Rusalka. Prohaska gave the 2009 Berlin premiere of Wolfgang Rihm's Mnemosyne with the Berlin Philharmonic under Matthias Pintscher. Prohaska's 2010 live performance in the Berg Lulu Suite with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra under Abbado was issued on an acclaimed Accentus DVD. Prohaska's other roles have included Poppea in Handel's Agrippina, Blonde in Mozart's The Abduction from the Seraglio, and Anne Truelove in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress. Her concert and recital repertoire offers works by Dowland, Haydn, Luigi Nono, and many others.

In 2011, Prohaska signed with Deutsche Grammophon and released Sirène, her first recital disc for the label featuring works by Mahler, Debussy, and Dowland, among others. She has also recorded for the Alpha, Accent, and Wergo labels. On Alpha, she has released two albums, both to critical success: Serpent & Fire in 2016 and Paradise Lost in 2020. In 2022, Prohaska was joined by violinist Isabelle Faust for an acclaimed recording of György Kurtág's Kafka-Fragmente. In 2024, Prohaska was featured alongside Marianne Crebassa on a recording of George Benjamin's opera Picture a day like this, conducted by the composer. That year, she was named the Opus Klassik Female Singer of the Year. ~ Robert Cummings & Keith Finke

Meryl Streep's success as an actress is virtually unparalleled; since her emergence in the late '70s, both in theater and film, she has remained a remarkably consistent and versatile performer, respected by her peers and hailed by critics as a once-in-a-generation talent. Though not a professional singer, her roles have occasionally crossed over into music, which she approaches with the same dedication and craft as her acting. Outside of musical theater, she is best known for singing in the popular Mamma Mia! franchise, based on the music of pop group ABBA, as well as the 2014 film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods.

As a 12-year-old, the New Jersey-born Streep sang in a school recital and even went so far as to take opera lessons, though it was theater that became her passion. As she made a name for herself in the 1970s, she took on a handful of musical roles including the Brecht/Weill comedy Happy End and a musical adaptation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland titled Alice in Concert. By the end of the '80s, Streep was a bona fide movie star, with a pair of Academy Awards, countless nominations, and a burgeoning career. She first appeared on record in 1984 narrating a version of The Velveteen Rabbit accompanied by pianist George Winston. Films like Death Becomes Her and Postcards from the Edge called for the occasional singing part, and Robert Altman's 2006 version of A Prairie Home Companion cast her as part of a vocal trio.

Streep's most prominent role as a singer came in the 2008 movie musical Mamma Mia!, which centered around the music of '70s hitmakers ABBA. The campy romantic comedy became a huge hit and featured Streep singing ABBA songs throughout both the film and accompanying soundtrack. Another prominent role was in director Rob Marshall's 2014 version of the Sondheim fantasy musical Into the Woods, in which Streep played a malevolent witch. Well-known for her accents, audiences heard a different side of Streep in 2016's Florence Foster Jenkins, a playful biopic about the well-meaning but utterly tone-deaf American socialite who attempted an opera career. Two years later, she reprised her role as Donna in the Mamma Mia! sequel Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. In the 2020s, Streep could be heard as a Broadway diva in the musical film The Prom and singing as part of the popular ensemble streaming series Only Murders in the Building. ~ Timothy Monger

Guided by composer and conductor Pierre Boulez in the 1970s, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France evolved into a versatile group whose repertory includes a good deal of contemporary French music. Beginning in the 1980s, the orchestra has been a spawning ground for conductors, not all of them French, who have gone on to international careers.

What is now the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, or in English the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra, was founded in 1937 in Paris, under the auspices of the Radiodiffusion Française national radio network. Its original name was the Orchestre Radio-Symphonique, and its first conductor was Rhené-Baton (René-Emmanuel Baton), who led the group until he died in 1940. The group limped through World War II with Eugène Bigot as the conductor; there were pauses as musicians were stranded in Paris while the group came under the control of the collaborationist French government in Vichy. After the end of World War II, the orchestra was re-formed; Bigot remained the music director until 1965, and the group gave performances at the Salle Érard and the Théâtre des Champs Élysées. In 1960, the orchestra was renamed the Orchestre Philharmonique de la Radiodiffusion Française, and in 1964, it became the Orchestre Philharmonique de l'ORTF. The name was changed again, to Nouvel Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, in 1975, and at that time, it was reconceptualized, with input from Boulez, as an ensemble that could handle many kinds of contemporary music. The orchestra assumed its present name in 1989. Conductors have included Charles Bruck (1965-1970), Marek Janowski (1989-2000), Myung-Whun Chung (2000-2015), and Mikko Franck, whose contract has been extended through 2025. In addition to performances at the Maison de la Radio in Paris, the orchestra performs at the new Philharmonie de Paris.

The Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France has recorded some 20 albums since the mid-1990s when Chung stimulated the orchestra's recording program. Many have involved contemporary French music, but the group has also performed popular repertory such as music by Bizet, Dukas, and Offenbach on the album French Spectacular (1998). The Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France has recorded for Virgin Classics, Aeon, and Deutsche Grammophon, where the group released the album Paris, with violinist Hilary Hahn, in 2021. ~ James Manheim

Mikko Franck is one of the leading European conductors of his generation. He has become a major figure on the concert stage, as well as in the opera pit, etching out one of the most successful conducting careers ever achieved by an artist before reaching the age of 30. His repertory is broad, encompassing operas by Mozart, Wagner, Mussorgsky, and Puccini, and concert works by Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, Rautavaara, and many others.

Franck was born on April 1, 1979 in Helsinki, Finland, the youngest of five children. His father was a pianist. Mikko began study of the violin at the age of 5 and at 13 entered the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki as one of its most precocious students. He took further music instruction in Sweden, New York, and Israel. In 1995, at 16, he tried his hand at conducting (a Haydn symphony), and afterward decided to take up the baton. Initially, he took private lessons from Jorma Panula, then two years later had further studies in conducting at the Sibelius Academy, earning his diploma in just a year.

By 2002, Franck had conducted many orchestras in his native Finland, as well as several important ones abroad, including the Philharmonia, the London Symphony, and the Israel Philharmonic and Munich Philharmonic orchestras. In September 2002, he was appointed music director and chief conductor of the Belgian National Orchestra. That same year, his first recording was released on the Ondine label, Sibelius' En Saga and Lemminkäinen Legends, which received a Grammy nomination.

In 2004 Franck accepted the appointment of music director of the Finnish National Opera, beginning in 2006 and remaining there until 2013. With his career in meteoric ascent, he began to experience an unusual problem for a young conductor -- frequent cancellations. To cite one of the most prominent, he missed two dates with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 2004. The reason -- Franck had suffered a knee injury playing soccer at 12, and while that affliction healed over time, it forced him to overcompensate on his right side during certain activity, leading to back problems.

Franck's career, however, has hardly been derailed, since he has remained in great demand: the New York Philharmonic -- as well as other major orchestras -- has offered further invitations. He was music director of the Belgian National Orchestra between 2002 and 2007. In 2015, he succeeded Myung-Whun Chung as director of Radio France's Philharmonic. Franck has remained a familiar figure in the recording studio, as well, with efforts like his Rautavaara collection, entitled Book of Visions (2006), also on Ondine.