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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com's Best of 1999
Visionary French composer Olivier Messiaen spent nearly a decade writing St. Francis of Assisi, his four-hour opera inspired by the saint's life--including the famous legend of preaching to the birds, featuring the composer's mesmerizing musical aviary. This spectacular live recording from Salzburg reveals the work as a profoundly moving summation of a lifetime of discovery. --Thomas May
Amazon.com essential recording
The most ambitious work by 20th-century French master Olivier Messiaen, Saint Francis is also his most all-embracing. He spent nearly a decade creating the opera, which not only encapsulates the composer's abiding Catholic faith but draws on a lifetime of musical discovery and brings together the elements of Messiaen's far-ranging, rich vocabulary: birdsong and nature as a source for music, Eastern modes, complex rhythms derived from ancient Greek poetry and Hindu talas, plainsong, and percussive gamelan-like sonorities, to list a few of the most salient. Messiaen chose Francis for operatic representation as the saint "most like Christ" and wrote his own libretto, using the gentle poetry of the Fioretti. The opera avoids dramatic tension but instead--almost ritualistically--portrays the "infusion of grace" through a series of encounters, including an angel playing music that offers a taste of heaven's bliss (marvelously orchestrated for ondes Martenot) and the famous scene of St. Francis preaching to the birds, in which Messiaen stacks multiple bird calls on top of each other in an inspired passage of "organized chaos."
This live recording was made during 1998's Salzburg Festival, and Kent Nagano (who had studied the work directly with Messiaen during the opera's premiere in 1983) marshals the score's 119 players and enormous chorus into a spectacular series of symphonic frescoes. He is sensitive both to the resonant use of silence in the score's interstices and--most memorably--to Messiaen's rare achievement in creating music to express "perfect joy." And the cast he works with is unbeatable: José van Dam conveys immense compassion and presence in the almost unbelievably strenuous demands of the title role, while Dawn Upshaw sings the angel with a penetrating purity. This masterpiece demands time to get to know it--more than the four hours it takes to unfold--but once you know it, its rewards are immense. --Thomas May
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
56 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Modern Opera at it's Finest,
This review is from: Messiaen: Saint François d'Assise / van Dam, Upshaw, Nagano (Audio CD)
Messiaen ranks very high on my list of favorite 20th century composers. Most of the reasons are those that he gives himself: his emphasis on emotion rather than calculation as the base of music (Messiaen was very anti-12-tone music as he finds it dry and impersonal, for the most part), and his exoticism. This comes through extremely well in this work and this recording, which features José van Dam (who sang in the Paris premiere) in the title role. Mr. van Dam announced that this performance of the work would be his last in the role, which was a wise decision as there is no way that he could possibly equal the strength with which he carries the role of a Saint. For an orchestra of over 110 pieces, including 3 ondes martenot, Nagano is the best possible choice as he keeps the music from being ponderous or dry with the caution often used to keep such large ensembles together. The music's intensely rhythmic side (as in the opening ritornelli for xylophone, marimba and wooden percussion) comes across beautifully crisp and dry. On the opposite side of the spectrum, the lyricism, including the scenes with Dawn Upshaw as the angel, is very fluid. The opera has moments of solemn faith as well as exuberance, both of which are equally strong forces.The work is intensely dramatic while never crossing the line into being Romantic. Although the orchestra is of Wagnerian dimension, the voice is always of primary importance. Much of the singing is unaccompanied, and many of the soliloquies have a monady-like quality that makes the language equal to the notes, and sometimes above. Although the music is intensely modern, the vocal parts harken back to Gregorian chant. The connection as far as the Catholic content is obvious. One of the greatest feats of this work is that Messiaen never attempts to reconstruct "divine" work using profane means; Christ is heard in the seventh scene but never seen, and His voice is that of the entire choir. When the angel plays the viol for St. Francis, it is not a violin solo or any other standard instrument, but an unworldly-sounding ondes martenot that carries the melody. I am not a religious person, yet while listening to this opera, I can appreciate in some small way the scope of Messiaen's faith and devotion. Listening to this work is a monumental experience, and the quality of this recording is the highest that can be had without being in the hall in Salzburg with the performers.
16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mind-blowing,
By Bassoonut (Mountain Home, AR USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Messiaen: Saint François d'Assise / van Dam, Upshaw, Nagano (Audio CD)
As a lover of opera, Messiaen and 20th century music in general, this was a natural choice for me; after wanting it for years I finally got it for Christmas. I finished it after over a week of listening to one of the eight tableaux at a time; as many reviewers have already said, that is probably the best way to listen to it. It's hard to swallow in one big gulp.
You see, everything about this piece is huge. Messiaen spent four years composing and another four orchestrating it and used every trick in his book, from palindrome and Greek rhythms to invented scales to birdsong. It is scored for seven soloists, an orchestra of 119 (7474-4633, three ondes Martenot, strings, and no less than 41 percussion instruments distributed among five players), and a choir of 150. There are sections in the score in which the conductor has to read upwards of 70 staves in which everybody is doing something different. The score itself comes in eight softcover volumes-one for each of the eight tableaux--on oversized paper and tips the scale at a total of just over fifty pounds. If you want a copy of the score, you'll have to fork over from $250 to $350 each for individual volumes and about $2,500 for the whole thing. (I will say this, however. Although it seems to be every reviewer's favorite subject, the length of four hours is not unusual for opera. Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro", for example, tends to clock in at just over three; Wagner's operas tend to go from three to four and a half hours and Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov" lasts for three and a half. Why, the original version of Glass' "Einstein on the Beach" goes for nearly five!) My point is that, in spite of all of this size, there are many ways in which the opera is almost minimalist, and that is why it is hard to listen to all at once. You see, it has been common practice since Stravinsky to use repetition in place of traditional melodic development, but Messiaen takes it to the extreme in this piece. Each character has at least two motives; a great deal of the score is made up of the repetition, alteration and superposition of such. Because of this and his quasi-atonal harmonic language, you can be anywhere from five minutes to an hour or two into it and it'll feel as though the music hasn't gone anywhere. This "static" quality is typical of Messiaen's music, but it's very prominent here and makes for a difficult listening. Once you get into it, however, the opera plays much like a Marcel Proust novel in that it is immensely rewarding and worth every ounce of effort put into it. I would recommend it for any fan of 20th century opera, or, indeed, for any music lover with an open mind. As far as this particular performance is concerned, it really doesn't get much better. Kent Nagano, one of the better conductors now living, studied the score with the composer before his death and participated in the premiere performance; thus this is about as musically accurate of a recording of this monster as you're going to get. José van Damm is one of the greatest baritones to ever live, and his performance here is no less than phenomenal. Dawn Upshaw's silky, sweet voice is perfect for the role of the angel and she sings with a beautiful rendition of the often difficult French accent. One of the ondistes is none other than Jeanne Loriod, one of Messiaen's in-laws and who has participated on nearly every ondes Martenot-featuring recording of Messiaen's. The orchestra's tackling of the inhumanly difficult score is no less than stellar, and the recording's engineering is nearly miraculous. It's hard to believe that it's live! It doesn't get much better than this, folks. You don't even have to be religious; I myself am an athiest. If you love Messiaen, if you love 20th century opera, or if you just love music and are open-minded, this is a well-spent $60.
32 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful music,
By W.G.J.. Braakhuis (Diemen, The Netherlands) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Messiaen: Saint François d'Assise / van Dam, Upshaw, Nagano (Audio CD)
I like this CD very much. Although the texts of this opera, if you can call it an opera, it looks more like an oratorium, are devoutly catholic, even in my opinion fundamentalist catholic, the music is suberb, rich and subtle. All as you expect from Messiaen, who I think, is along with Stravinsky and Ligeti one of the greatest composers of this almost gone century. In some parts there is a great building tension which makes for exemple the kiss of St. Francis of a Leper and the healingof that leper -for non believers non-event of childish, 19th centery catholic believe- a great drama of wagnerian magtitude. The texts contrasts in my opinion stark with the music which is modern, eventfull and new. Messiaen makes you believe in the story and the grace of God on St. Francis even if you are not a catholic or do not believe in a God at all and that's what a makes him geat artist. If only fundamentalists of other Religions could make their believes in such a rich music, the world could be a better place.
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