About the work
Saint François d’Assise is Olivier Messiaen’s only opera, a roughly four-hour work in three acts and eight tableaux to the composer’s own libretto, tracing episodes from the life of St Francis of Assisi. Messiaen worked on it from 1975 to 1983; the premiere was conducted by Seiji Ozawa on 28 November 1983 at the Palais Garnier in Paris.
Plot
Rather than a continuous plot, the eight tableaux string together spiritual stations in Francis’s life: his kiss for a leper, an encounter with a music-making angel, his sermon to the birds, the receiving of the stigmata and finally his death. The birdsong Messiaen collected throughout his life runs through the score as a musical language of its own.
Cultural significance
With an orchestra of around 120 musicians, a choir of similar size and a performance time of nearly four hours, “Saint François d’Assise” is regarded as the summit of Messiaen’s output and as one of the most demanding opera productions of the twentieth century.