Saint François d’Assise – Scènes franciscaines
An Opera in Three Acts and Eight Tableaux by Olivier Messiaen
Salzburger Festspiele, Performances of 9 & 19 August 2026

Conductor	Maxime Pascal
Director	Romeo Castellucci
Artistic Assistant	Giulia Giammona
Dramaturge	Christian Longchamp
Choreographer	Yasmine Hugonnet
The Angel	Lauranne Oliva
Saint Francis	Philippe Sly
The Leper	Sean Panikkar
Brother Leo	Russell Braun
Brother Masseo	Léo Vermot-Desroches
Brother Bernard	Sir Willard White
Brother Sylvester	Marius Aron
Brother Rufin	Ivan Lyvch
Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsopernchor	Director: Jozef Chabron
Wiener Phiharmoniker
Ondes Martenots	Nathalie Forget, Augustin Viard, Cecile Lartigau

The Greatest Saint François d’Assise So Far
This opera is a unique combination of sung text and orchestra. The libretto is unique both in provenance and purpose, and the orchestra is exorbitant for its size and its inclusion of instruments heard in no other opera. And yet the content and its theme are nothing new, but hundreds of years old: both the plot and the words of the libretto are directly taken from accounts, writings, and sayings of the Saint, near-contemporary with his time on earth. In fact, the gaping contrast between old and new – between the divine miracle of Francis’s life and death, which took place eight hundred years ago this year and the aesthetic miracle of Olivier Messiaen’s musical imagination and composition, which still holds the vanguard of the latest modern music – is, in a word, indigestible. Rather than blending these elements into a unity the piece imposes upon its audience a challenge to summon psychic resources wide and deep to hold it all together through to the end.

Besides the music and the words there is of course the staging, the “mise en scène.” The Paris premiere of 1983 followed the instructions in Messiaen’s libretto, staging the scenes unobtrusively in various venues at Assisi with simple costumes and no decoration (a video of it is currently available on YouTube). But at the same time it barely matters where the speech-and-music takes place for they are each other’s places. In the majority of its production history, the Assisi staging has continually given way to something else: the insertion of supplementary visuals and more. The 2002 US premiere in San Francisco, as well as I can remember it (visuals of the production are still under lock and key) placed a minimalist, geometrical, blue and white spiral road in the middle of the stage, and the action took place on it or beneath it or next to it. The beautiful production of Stanislas Nordey in Paris, 2004, created a series of tableaus (indeed the eight scenes of the piece are called tableaux by Messiaen), essentially two-dimensional, having really nothing to do with the action but framing it: in the last scenes the whole stage becomes a triptych with the chorus appearing below as if in a praedella. Pierre Audi in Amsterdam, 2008 (the only production available on DVD, so far), placed the orchestra onto the rear of the stage in shadows, behind the arena of the action, in which was placed a pile of crosses paradoxically abundant but discarded. At the in-the-round hall of the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg last year, a featureless gangway was built above the orchestra which the characters would enter and leave, while from the ceiling there was suspended a set of screens providing a view, in the round, of continuous silent video, of homeless street scenes, of an asylum, of a contemporary rescue operation on the seas, all loosely related to the mendicant service of Francis and his troupe; and the Angel betimes appeared among the audience. The height of enthusiasm was reached three years ago in Stuttgart, when the performers pilgrimed out into the city with the audience following behind for scenes here and there, the production advising walking shoes and taking virtually all day. In comparison with these, the staging of the Geneva production last year returned to the places of Assisi though with a phantasmagoric escape into a hammam when the Leper is cleansed.

Gratuitous staging gimmicks have become a regular surprise in productions from the standard repertoire in this era of Regietheatre, but these Messiaen productions are not part of that, and cannot be. In this case, there is no wrong place to put the action, no way to turn the real Francis into someone or something he isn’t, and no way to misrepresent his invisible but always present silent partner – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Francis’s actions and words are too simple and elemental to make something else of; and a denouement consisting in his grateful reception of death is too powerful and stunning an event to mess with.

In lieu of being amused or distracted by these innovations, the audience for this piece deserves to be helped at holding together the continuous back and forth between the extraordinary music of staccato birdsong and long, yearning melodies from the violins and the ondes martenots, over against the sung words that express the very boundaries of spiritual crisis and joy in disarmingly simple terms. The great virtue of the new Castellucci production at Salzburg this summer is that the visuals he has added – the choreography, lighting, and material items – do more than all the other productions I have seen to bring all this together: to deepen the sense, unify the feeling, and make visible the significance of Francis’s spiritual experiences, which is the real substance of the piece.

To prove my claims requires first that we know what that experience consists in, as presented in libretto, based on the writings of the near-contemporaries of Francis.

The Experiences of Francis
Already, in the very first scene, Francis admonishes his giddy and anxious Brother Leo that perfect joy consists not in the glory of being able to heal all manner of disease, or to prophesy the future, or in knowing all things. One cannot glory in these for they are gifts of God, but (paradoxically) perfect joy consists in being willing to bear pain, persecution, and abuse because these bring us closer to a knowledge and participation in Christ’s suffering on the cross. To get over ourselves in this way is something we can rightly call our own. This powerful statement not only tells us what Francis might have been thinking when he disowned the wealth and popularity of his previous life (an event before the opera-proper begins), but it also articulates with astounding directness a thing worshipful Christians are vouchsafed very often to realize when weekly they are called to contemplate and receive the love of Jesus.

For the balance of the first Act, Francis and his brothers, at morning Lauds, praise God for all the aspects of His creation, and the brothers then leave Francis to continue, alone. He knows that the creation (paradoxically) includes ugly and even repulsive things – “the pustulating toad, the poisonous mushroom – And You know my fear and revulsion at the lepers living in our asylum: Grant me to meet with a Leper and become able to love him!” In the next scene he does meet a Leper, who is angry at the world and the Brothers and at Francis for their continual admonitions and mere words of consolation. With the Angel’s help Francis tells him his heart has condemned him, but as the Angel says, “God is greater than your heart” – and then Francis embraces and kisses him. The leper is miraculously healed by this act of love, and Francis asks for his forgiveness for not having loved him enough, adding that neither of them is worthy of being healed.

The second Act presents relief from the intense penitence of Francis, and will turn instead to Tenderness and Beauty. The Angel (in disguise) comes to visit Francis but will first tarry with the brothers, allowing him to pray alone in the grotto. We are given a sample of the range of piety among the brothers – and the vicissitudes familiar in any parish – as the Vicar is too busy to talk with the impertinent stranger while Brother Bernard vulnerably expresses to him his life’s hope of predestination, that in the final days the face of Christ might be seen in his own, confessing he has entered the monastery to escape the outside world. The Angel next comes to Francis, answering his prayer to taste “the ineffable feast, the light, the perfect light, the tenderness reserved for those who fear Thee.” The Angel’s expression in answer is of a most striking formulation: “God dazzles us by excess of truth; beauty carries us to God in our lack of truth; music suspends life from the ladders of heaven.” The contrast with the penitence and suffering of the previous Act could not be stronger; but then, as the Angel plays long soaring lines in many tonal colors on his viol for several minutes, Francis swoons and collapses. The paradox returns: he nearly expires. We have been transported into a higher plateau permanently beyond the everyday, and have been brought into and been embraced and spellbound by Francis’s timeless meditation and prayer. Francis next, on another day, moves into the world of his other friends, the birds, as they sing to him a short concert of their calls, and he preaches to them in reply for several minutes identifying and addressing them one by one, after which they grace him with a huge chaotic concert of birdcalls ready, for all we know, to verge on the endless – and the second Act comes to a close.

The dimensions of what we have been undergoing have called for spiritual openness and sensitivity as well as stamina beyond any usual measure, but with the third Act the final measure arrives. Francis prays to Jesus for two things before he should die: first, to feel the pain and humiliation He felt on the Cross, and second to feel in his heart the love that enabled Him to accept His Passion on behalf of the rest of us. The paradox of the first scene returns: the desire for Christ’s pain and the desire for a love that can sustain it. His prayers are then answered in his reception of the Stigmata; his prayer reaches an extreme that leaps beyond paradox: may he become a “second host.” Consumed as his life has been by love, he prays to be consumed in turn by those he leaves behind. Finally, after having exposed us to the expansive dimension and paradox of his faith, the Angel and his since departed Leper arrive to usher him along to the Other Place. With lengthy and heartrending adieus to his Assisi, to his brothers, and to his birds – to all creatures of time and creatures of space – and giving thanks to God for revealing Himself to him in the beauty of music, he dies.

Castellucci’s Mise en Scène
Typical reviews of this opera account for the huge impression the opera makes with expressions of amazement vaunting Messiaen’s idiosyncratic piety, wondering at his idiosyncratic preoccupation with birdsong, and noting (with some ambivalence) the five-hour length of the piece. One is uncertain whether to count this praise in the aftermath or warnings to the future audience. In the present case, however, we can thank one Elena Deinhammer. I append a translation below. She has not only caught almost everything but more importantly has articulated the quasi-liturgical and yet concrete and everyday character of Castellucci’s realization of the opera. To this I have nothing to add.

Kenneth Quandt 8/27/26 San Francisco