Word: saint
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...work about the danger of starmaking in Western society." He has literally cast Seberg as a modern Joan of Arc. He has staged Seberg's involvement with the Black Panthers as a khaki chorus line brandishing rifles to a rhythm-and-blues beat. The show climaxes with Saint Jean burning at the stake for her ideals, torch courtesy of the FBI. Jean Seberg opened this month with a couple of champions and more detractors among the London critics. The most telling slur has come from Hall's alma mater, the R.S.C., whose own musical, the satirical pantomime Poppy...
...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...
...fifth scene, an angel (Soprano Christiane Eda-Pierre) visits the saint (Bass-Baritone José Van Dam) as he is praying. "You speak with God through music," the angel sings, no doubt voicing Messiaen's own conception of his artistic role. "He will reply to you through music. Let the secrets, the secrets of glory open." As the angel begins to play a heavenly viol, an Ondes Martenot sounds a deceptively ingenuous melody. At once oddly angular but celestially serene, it floats above a soft C major chord in the strings and a wordless chorus. The moment...
Outstandingly conducted by Ozawa, a longtime Messiaen champion, the production is generally worthy of its subject. The title role, superbly sung by Van Dam, must surely be the longest individual part in the operatic literature. The saint appears in seven of the eight tableaux and does much, if not most, of the singing in each. At the composer's request, Giuseppe Crisolini-Malatesta based the sets and costumes on paintings by Fra Angelico, Giotto and Matthias Grünewald. As staged by Sandro Sequi, scenes are played in small, diorama-like boxes to emphasize the work's distant...
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...