Messiaen: Saint François d'Assise / van Dam, Upshaw, Nagano [Box set]

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... read more

Messiaen: Saint François d'Assise / van Dam, Upshaw, Nagano [Box set]

Messiaen: Saint François d'Assise / van Dam, Upshaw, Nagano, Music, Olivier Messiaen, Kent Nagano, Dawn Upshaw, José van Dam, Hallé Orchestra, Arnold Schoenberg Chor, Tom Krause, John Aler, Classical, Classical Music, French 20th/21st Century Opera, Opera, Opera / Operetta / Oratorio, Opera/Operetta

Messiaen: Saint François d'Assise / van Dam, Upshaw, Nagano
Average customer rating:

Collosal Opera!

Ravishing Music

An Absolute Apotheosis

I'm trying and so is it

Mind-blowing

Messiaen: Saint François d'Assise / van Dam, Upshaw, Nagano
Olivier Messiaen , Kent Nagano , Dawn Upshaw , José van Dam , Hallé Orchestra , Arnold Schoenberg Chor , Tom Krause , and John Aler
Manufacturer: Deutsche Grammophon
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: B00000JSAO
Release Date: 1999-08-10

Tracks:

Saint Francois d'Assise: Act One, Scene One - The Cross: Un peu vif (J'ai peur, sur las route)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Un peu vif (J'ai peur, sur la route)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Un Peu vif (J'ai peur, sur la route)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Un peu vif (S'il se met pleuvoir)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Un Peu vif - Saint Fran ois et Fr re L on remettent leur capuchon...
Saint Francois d'Assise: Act One, Scene Two - Lauds: Un peu lent
Saint Francois d'Assise: Un peu lent (Lou sois-tu, mon Seigneur, pour fr re Vent)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Un peu lent (Lou sois-tu, mon Seigneur, pour soeur Eau)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Un peu lent (Lou sois-tu, mon Seigneur, pour soeur notre m re la Terre)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Un peu lent (Saint! Saint! Saint!)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Un peu lent (O Toi! Toi qui as fait le temps!)
Act One - The Kissing Of The Leper: Bien modere
Saint Francois d'Assise: Act One, Scene 3 - The Kissing Of The Leper: Bien modere (Comment peut-on vivre une telle vie?)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Bien modere (Entre Saint Fran ois...)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Bien modere (La p nitence! la p nitence! Enl ve-moi d'abord mes pustules)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Bien modere (L preux, ton coeur t'accuse)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Bien modere (Pardonne-moi, P re, je r crimine toujours)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Bien modere (Miracle! Regarde, P re)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Bien modere (P re, P re, j'ai tellement protest contre mes souffrances)

Tracks:

Saint Francois d'Assise: Act Two, Scene Four - The Journeying Angel: Un peu vif
Saint Francois d'Assise: Un peu vif (J'ai peur, sur la route)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Un peu vif (Frere Mass e rentre dans la salle conventuelle...)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Un peu vif (Qui peut frapper de la sorte?)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Un peu vif (Pourquoi me d range-t-on sans cesse?)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Un peu vif (Mais, il frappe encore!)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Un peu vif (Dieu te donne sa paix, bon Fr re!)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Un peu vif (Puis-je mon tour te poser une question?)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Un peu vif (L'ange fait un petit geste de la main...)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Act Two, Scene Five - The Angel-Musician: Bien modere
Saint Francois d'Assise: Bien modere (Toutes ces gloires dont parle l'Ap tre me ravissent)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Bien modere (Montre-moi combien est grande l'abondance de douceur)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Bien modere (Chant de la fauvette Gerygone...)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Bien modere (Que me veux-tu, fr re gheppio, faucon cr cerelle?)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Bien modere (Fran ois! Fran ois!)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Bien modere (Pardonne ma pri re, bel Ange de Dieu...)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Bien modere (L'Ange se pr pare jouer de la viole...)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Bien modere (J'ai peur, sur la route)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Bien modere (Mes petites brebis, merci de vos soins)

Tracks:

Saint Francois d'Assise: Act Two, Scene Six - The Sermon To The Birds: Un peu vif
Saint Francois d'Assise: Un peu vif (Pere, te souviens-tu du jeune homme de Sienne?)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Un peu vif (Une louange! un point d'exclamation!)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Petit concert d'oiseaux
Saint Francois d'Assise: Petit concert d'oiseaux (Toute chose de beaut doit parvenir la libert)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Petit concert d'oiseaux (Fr res oiseaux, en tous temps et lieux, louez votre Cr ateur)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Petit concert d'oiseaux (Il vous aime, Celui qui vous accorde tant de bienfaits!)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Grand concert d'oiseaux
Saint Francois d'Assise: Grand concert d'oiseaux (Avec quel respect ils se sont tus, d s que tu as commenc pr cher!)

Tracks:

Saint Francois d'Assise: Act Three, Scene Seven - The Stigmata: Bien modere
Saint Francois d'Assise: Bien modere (Seigneur J sus-Christ, accorde-moi deux gr ces)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Bien modere (Les miens, je les ai aim s)
Saint Francois d'Assise: The Stigmata (O faiblesse!... Ame tr s m prisable!...)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Une lueur rouge et violette enflamme toute la sc ne...
Saint Francois d'Assise: Bien modere (Si tu portes de bon coeur la croix)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Act Three, Scene Eight - Death And The New Life: Tres modere
Saint Francois d'Assise: Tres modere (Adieu, cr ature de temps! Adieu, cr ature d'espace!)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Tres modere (Lou sois-tu, mon Seigneur, pour soeur Mort)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Tres modere (J'appelle: Ha! et ma voix: Ha!)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Tres modere (Fran ois! Fran ois! Rappelle-toi)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Tres modere (Seigneur! Seigneur! Musique et Po sie m'ont conduit vers Toi)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Tres modere (Uk est parti...comme un silence)
Saint Francois d'Assise: Autre est l' clat de la lune, autre est l' clat du soleil, Alleluia!

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

Customer Reviews:

Collosal Opera!.......2005-10-08

If you like Ligeti, Richard Strauss, Prokofiev, Dusapin, Penderecki than buy this Opera today!

Ravishing Music.......2005-09-30

This work is the culmination of a lifetime of musical experimentation and fervent religous devotion. It contains a remarkable amount of absolutely ravishing music. The soloists, chorus, and orchestral work in this recording are absolutely first rate. As an effort to communicate the emotional experience of mysticism and religous fervor, this work will probably never be surpassed. It is certainly Wagnerian in the sense that a powerful musical language to used to convey meanings that cannot be expressed in simple verbal or logical terms. As a listening experience, Saint Francois is one of the pinnacles of 20th century music. Whether or not it works as well on stage is another question. I suspect its length and relatively static action will work against it. Because of the huge demands for the large orchestra and chorus, unusual instruments, and difficult solo parts, it certainly won't be performed often. This only makes this superb recording all the more important.

An Absolute Apotheosis.......2005-08-13

This work is one of the most highest pinnacles of French composer Olivier Messiaen, a deserved apotheosis for his lifetime achivements. In this, his only Opera, he summarized his Aesthetic, Philosophical, Scientific (for he was an Ornithologist, too) and Theological quests. For the trained music lover it will be very difficult to leave the chair while listening to the subtle ways he used to address such an enormous endevour. Both, orchestra, performers and its conductor left in this superb recording a magnificent performance, a la par with the greatness of Messiaen's inspiration. But for the beguinner I would advise to approach the French master through other compositions, like his Orchestral Fugue in D Minor, of 1928, or the 1940-41, Quatuor pour la fin du temps, (Chamber: violin, clarinet, cello, piano), of tremendous historical and human significance, for it was composed, and first performed, in the entrails of a WWII German Prison Camp.

I'm trying and so is it.......2005-06-28

I feel like the kid about to shout "The Emperor has no clothes!"

I've been giving this quite a chance. I generally love Messiaen but after a while one senses a sort of job-jar of stock gestures coupled with the endless birdsong quotes, especially in the later music. Using birdsong was not exactly an aesthetic decision for the composer, more an intellectual one (sorry, intellectual and not spiritual--HE decided that birdsong was God's natural melody whereas John Cage had a whole different, and I'd argue healthier, slant on "natural music"), and sometimes it shows.

Unfortunately, this opera is causing me to sort of rethink Messiaen. I'm spending too much time wanting to, and feeling that I should, be getting something out of this and yet I'm not. It's boring. The lack of movement through the interminable length doesn't read as spirituality to me, it comes across as hubris, or worse, a simulation of what the spiritual experience is supposed to be like. The Saint's greatness must be measured in audience becoming comatose. It has the same enervating quality as a Catholic mass in Latin. A long one.

Messiaen was an insanely self-confident individual (the great quote was "I wish I was as certain of anything as Messiaen is of everything") and people tend to be that way when they think God's sitting at their side. He was also exceptionally provincial and judgmental in his musical tastes and that's not a good sign. A great composer should have a keen awareness of the greatness of others, it's a reflection of their own musical intelligence, an indication of their awareness of their place in the great scheme of things. Elliott Carter, for example, is a great admirer of Mozart. So was Strauss (who once endearingly called himself a first-class second-rate composer--a self-deprecation that would never have flitted through Messiaen's head). So was Beethoven. Even Wagner, egoist that he was, reluctantly nodded to his equals or betters.

I prefer the earthy individualist self-confidence of Mozart or Beethoven (Imagine either thinking God spoke through them!) to the star-struck self-deifying humility of Messiaen or, worse, straight self-deification of Stockhausen (I am God!). It's the difference between knowing you're dang good and thinking these opinions are being made for you and to your benefit by a committee on Mt. Olympus. Notice that these Messiaenic composers, like Sorabji and Scelci, tend to eventually drift away from the Earth's gravitational field. I think Messiaen did that when he began insisting on his presence at recordings and performances of his music (a primary point of SCORES used to be so people could play your stuff without you needing to be there) and when he wrote this Gigantisaurus. I think more people should have said no to the man toward the middle to end of his life. He needed a sense of proportion. Instead they name a mountain for him out West.

I would say that if late Messiaen floats your Ark, get this, except you already have it. If you're an opera buff and wondering what the fuss is here then be prepared to buy it, struggle through a disc or maybe two, and then spend years staring at that big dusty box on the shelf wondering if it's you, Messiaen, modern music or what. I just dusted mine off for the last time and it's off to the used CD retailer in town. The birds outside are singing up a riot and it's lovely and it doesn't cost a dime. Bye Bye.

Mind-blowing.......2005-02-16

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.

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