Messiaen & Nagano: 'St. Francis of Assisi' embraces faith in a time of agnostics
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Music Director Ken Nagano will conduct the Montreal Symphony and Chorus in a concert version of his teacher Olivier Messiaen’s grandest work, “St. Francis of Assisi.” Courtesy Montreal Symphony |
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By Jim Lowe Times Argus Staff - Published: November 21, 2008
More Messiaen. This year is the 100th anniversary of one of the few late 20th century composers likely to be remembered for centuries after his death. French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) was a musician of innovation, spirituality and depth. His devout Roman Catholicism, love of birdsong and the teachings of Jesus Christ, make him unique in this agnostic and cynical era. Without proselytizing, his music not only reflects these beliefs, it trumpets them.
Last weekend, the Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble honored Messiaen with two performances, in Montpelier and St. Michael's College in Colchester, of the composer's "Quartet for the End of Time," written and premiered by Messiaen when he was held in a Nazi prison camp during World War II. The work proved seminal in revealing the composer's unique mix of the sensual and the spiritual.
Next month, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal will present Messiaen's only opera, "St. Francis of Assisi (Saint François d'Assise)," in a concert version, the work that the composer himself called the summation of his compositions. Music Director Kent Nagano, who assisted the composer at the opera's premiere in Paris in 1983, will conduct two performances: Friday, Dec. 5, and Tuesday, Dec. 9, both at 6 p.m., at Place des Arts' Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier in Montreal.
Although a "concert version," the OSM production will be massive, employing 250 musicians on stage and visual projection on a giant screen. Nagano will lead the OSM, its chorus of 100 voices, and seven international soloists. In addition, young musicians from the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal as well as from the music faculties of McGill University and the Université de Montréal will join forces. French multimedia artist Jean-Baptiste Barrière has created a visual projection on a giant screen for the occasion.
The international cast brings together France's Marc Barrard in the title role and Laurent Alvaro as Frère Léon, as well as Canadian singers Aline Kutan, Gino Quilico, Benjamin Butterfield and Antonio Figueroa.
Messiaen based the four-and-a-half-hour opera (not including intermissions!) on "The Fioretti" and "Reflections on the Stigmata," books written by anonymous Franciscans of the 14th century. In seven parts, it tells of the ascension to grace of St. Francis. Although the work frequently has a static feeling, it has an unrelenting and beautiful power beneath.
"Messiaen liked the François character," Nagano once explained in an interview. "He said he identified with him and, somehow felt a certain autobiographical connection to what François went through. Most of us can relate in a profoundly personal and intimate way to those crossroads which Saint François is reaching. So, just going through the various tableaux of the opera, I can think of the story in very intimate terms, very personal terms, just as well as anyone of us, because what Messiaen has chosen to depict will touch every one of us some way or another, in our own personal lives."
There are seven characters: The Angel, St. Francis, the Leper, Brother Elias, and three Brothers especially beloved of St. Francis: Brother Leo, Brother Masseo and Brother Bernard. The grace in the soul of St. Francis progresses through the work's eight episodes.
In the first, St. Francis explains to Brother Leo that for the love of Christ he must patiently endure all contradictions, all suffering, and that this is the "perfect joy." In the second, after the recitation of Matins by the Brothers, St. Francis, remaining alone, asks God that he might meet a leper and be capable of loving him. St. Francis enters a leper-hospital in the third, where a leper, horrible and repulsive and covered in bloodstains and pustules, protests violently against his disease.
In "The Journeying Angel," the fourth, an angel who looks like a traveler, knocks on the door of the monastery, and asks a question about Predestination. The Angel appears to St. Francis, in the fifth, and, to give him a taste of celestial bliss to come, plays him a solo on his viol.
In the sixth, "The Sermon to the Birds," St. Francis preaches a sermon to the birds and solemnly blesses them. The birds reply with a great chorus.
In the seventh, "The Stigmata," a great cross appears, and five luminous beams dart from the cross and strike the hands, feet and the right side of St. Francis. The five wounds, which resemble the five wounds of Christ, are the divine confirmation of St. Francis' holiness.
Finally, St. Francis is dying, and all the Brothers are around him. The Angel and the Leper appear to St. Francis to comfort him. St. Francis utters his last words: "Lord! Music and poetry have led me to Thee …"
Messiaen's music clearly comes from that of Claude Debussy but, where the French Impressionist bridged the 19th and 20th centuries, Messiaen utilizes the possibilities of the 20th. He combines the colors of Debussy with the harmonic and rhythmic imagination of Stravinsky. But, the result is pure Messiaen, as it reflects the man and his unusual mix of intellectual depth and devout Catholicism.
Messiaen devotes a great majority of the opera's running time to orchestral music, though not to the detriment of character development. The composer conveys the characters' psychological and emotional state through the use of leitmotif and birdsong, another Messiaen trademark.
"My opera is rich, I've often been reproached for that," Messiaen once said. "I've been told: Your work is much too rich to describe a saint who was poor and wished to possess nothing. I've answered: Indeed he was extremely poor and wished to possess nothing; he would scarcely eat and owned a single threadbare set of clothes. But he was rich in sunshine, in flowers, in trees, in birds, in oceans, in mountains. He was rich in everything that surrounded him. It was the most beautiful wealth imaginable."
Nagano, now in his third season as music director of the OSM, was a disciple who had the opportunity to study at the foot of the master. Nagano conducted and recorded "St. Francis of Assisi," with the great José van Dam as François, at the Salzburg Festival 10 years ago. He has also conducted the work in Paris, London, Madrid, Berkeley and Utrecht over the last 25 years.
"When he invited me to live with him and Yvonne Loriod (Messiaen's second wife) in Paris, for the better of the year, to prepare the original production of 'Saint François d'Assise' at the Opera de Paris," Nagano said, "he made it possible to open a doorway into European culture, European history, European sensitivities and European aesthetics. That had a huge impact upon not only my musical endowment, but also my personal endowment, both as an individual, as a scholar, and as a researcher on how one reads the world."
After Nagano's performance of the opera at the Salzburg, leading Manchester's Hallé Orchestra, The New York Times reported: "Mr. Nagano and his orchestra perform with … overwhelming glory in company with the chorus in the closing moments. If music could make us good, this music would."