Olivier Messiaen, Saint François d'Assise (1983)

"One of the major composers of the twentieth century," wikipedia calls him, which shows how much I know: I'd never even heard of him before I found this, his only opera, on Medici.

Messiaen was a devout Catholic, and this reflects that. His original idea was to write about Jesus, but he felt that that would be a little presumptuous and so went with Saint Francis, who has many Christ-like features while also being--I guess--more approachable. He worked on it for eight years, and thought that it really took it out of him; that it was shortening his life. But I'm not sure about that; he was seventy-four when it premiered and he lived another eight years after, so...difficult to say.

At any rate, it is what it is. BOY what a useful sentence that was. Naturally, this is about Saint Francis of Assisi. It's not a conversion narrative; he's already a friar when it opens. Apart from the general thread of his spiritual development, it doesn't really have a plot, being rather a series of vignettes: he and other priests discussing theology, him meeting and curing a leper, him preaching to the birds, and of course his ultimate death and transfiguration.

Messiaen's music is extremely interesting here. Probably not for the traditionalist, but very compelling to me. It's very percussion-heavy, heavily featuring bells and other unusual instruments, plus the theremin-like ondes Martenot (as later heard in Thomas Adès' Exterminating Angel--in fact, it's obvious that, in general, Messiaen was a big influence on Adès). He was also an ornithologist, keenly interested in birdsong, and that too is reflected in the score--which seems thematically appropriate, given Saint Francis' association with birds.

This was an intriguing one to watch. There are definitely times when Messiaen seems to get at the numinous. Rod Gilfry doesn't exactly look like I'd expect the character to (what baritone does? I'm not sure I have an answer to that), but in the end, he embodied the role well. However, at two-hundred-sixty-odd minutes, this is by no means a short opera, and at the risk of sounding like a philistine, I wished sometimes that more would actually happen. The most compelling scene to me was the one with the leper, because it presents actual drama: the leper is filled with rage and disgust at his condition, and Francis recognizes that his own instinctive revulsion at the man is something he needs to transcend: only when he's able to love him absolutely unconditionally can the healing take place. That was moving, but a lot of the rest of it can't help feeling a bit inert, and well you might say "hey! It's filled with spiritual movement! How dare you call it 'inert,' you filthy reprobate?!?" And yet, that was my reaction. Give me a break; I'm not saying I wouldn't recommend it. I think it likely that most people will find it a bit slow in places, however.