Messiaen's opera Saint François d'Assise, first performed at the Paris Opera on 28 November 1983, steadily grew. But the composer's view was always sure and the same.

Paris 1983

God does not choose his saints for their learning or his composers for their theatrical flair. It never seemed likely that Messiaen would write an opera, nor did he himself ever entertain such pretensions. When Rolf Liebermann first asked him, in 1974, he sagely replied that he had no gift for the theatre. But Liebermann persisted, Messiaen yielded, and now, after much delay, we have the result: an evening of Wagnerian length in which holy mysteries are celebrated with much splendour and strangeness.

Messiaen has described his opera as showing ‘different aspects of grace in the soul of St Francis’. This is not a particularly dramatic subject. It is, however, an apt one for a composer who has always concerned himself with presenting the intervention of the divine in the human as an exposition of unquestioned and unquestionable fact. Eight scenes are iconically displayed, all boldly setting forth and repeating symbols in whose composition Messiaen has drawn on the resources of a creative life spanning five decades. One recognizes sounds from throughout his output: a mystic harmony from Le Banquet céleste, his opus one, or the eerie noise of a wind machine or brass mouthpiece from his otherwise most recent score, Des Canyons aux étoiles… No synthesis is attempted, for synthesis would require development, which remains wholly alien to Messaien's art.