Word: frans
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...Requiem, a work in progress for vocal quartet and chorus that promises to be a major statement, both musically and politically, when it is finished some time next year. And last week in Paris, Seiji Ozawa presided over the world premiere of Olivier Messiaen's first opera, Saint François d'Assise, which is clearly intended to crown the 75-year-old Messiaen's career...
...Devils of Loudun (1969) and Paradise Lost (1978), which the composer has called a Sacra Rappresentazione rather than a conventional opera. Paradise Lost, commissioned by the Lyric Opera of Chicago, was the victim of a turgid production that obscured the work's many beauties. Messiaen's Saint François-which resembles no other work in the operatic literature as much as it resembles Paradise Lost in its static, quasi-oratorio quality- is more fortunate all around...
...opera of such ambition and scope, coming as it does late in the composer's life, naturally recalls a similar religious epic, Parsifal. Like Wagner's valedictory, Saint François is a spacious work of musical architecture, a cathedral in sound that generates a sense of timelessness or, more precisely, of time suspended. It unfolds at a stately pace, illustrating episodes from the life of the saint (the preaching to the birds, the visitation by an angel, the receiving of the stigmata), animated by the whole range of Messiaen's musical vocabulary. Strong, sharply defined motifs...
Despite the successful premiere, Saint François is too long and too difficult for most opera houses to undertake, and the title role is such an awesome challenge that it is hard to imagine any baritone learning it on speculation. Messiaen's uncompromising aesthetic also places great demands on the listener. But if, as Mark Twain supposedly said, Wagner's music is not as bad as it sounds, Messiaen's opera is not as formidable as it seems. Saint François d'Assose is a rare spiritual testament and deserves a wider hearing, perhaps...
Elsewhere there was mostly hostility. French President François Mitterrand's government denounced the Denktash decision "without reservation." Declared Mitterrand coldly: "I don't think that the great powers want to involve themselves in this issue and thereby place an additional burden on those matters already in dispute." British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher suggested that, as the guarantors of Cyprus' independence under the 1960 treaty, Britain, Greece and Turkey discuss the problem. Greece, however, objected to face-to-face talks with Ankara, forcing Thatcher to seek a compromise formula for negotiations. The issue ultimately went before...