In yesterday's la Repubblica (not online, sorry), Rufus Wainwright talks about his work on the opera Prima Donna for the Met ("My dream is to compose three operas that will be performed for the next two centuries"), his taste in opera composers (Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, Bellini, Berlioz), the first time he listened to Verdi's Requiem ("I was 14, and Verdi's Requiem shocked me: my father was very confused by my musical extravagance, once he saw me huddled in a corner of my room, bawling my eyes out while listening on my headphones to the Rex Tremendae, from the Requiem. He thought I was sick... but then he must have thought, better addicted to the opera than addicted to heroin".