Saint François d’Assise
Royal Albert Hall
As the climax of the Proms centenary of Messiaen, The Netherlands Opera brought his vast opera Saint François d’Assise to a sadly uncrowded Royal Albert Hall. And by Act III there was room for the prommers to lie in the arena as if they were fellow recipients of the stigmata. Given the contemporary taste for the gigantic in music, I find that odd, though Saint François does make exceptional demands on its audience, not to mention its performers.
The performance was musically, for the most part, on an exalted level. But I think it was a grave mistake to demi-semi-stage it: three small benches, a mingy cross in Act I — that was the ‘scenery’. The monks, in white tops and black trousers, looked like waiters. The lighting was almost uniformly dim, when Messiaen, who was almost as fond of colour as he was of birdsong, not only instructs that there be blazes of variously coloured light, but writes music that cries out for it.
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