Word: sainte
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...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...
...extra brass and winds, a large percussion battery and three electronic keyboard instruments called Ondes Martenot. The orchestra is so big that it overflows the pit to envelop both sides of the stage and several boxes. The subject is the spiritual transformation of Francis the man into Francis the saint. "I have chosen Francis," says Messiaen, "because he is the person who most resembles Christ: chaste, humble, poor and bearing the stigmata as a mark of God's approbation...
...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...