A Glorious Journey

SAN FRANCISCO--Olivier Messiaen’s opera, “Saint Francois d’Assise,” is very long and contains little external drama. The composer’s own plot synopsis of the fifth of the opera’s eight scenes, for instance, describes the action in two brisk sentences. An angel appears to Francis and plays for him a solo on the viol. That foretaste of celestial bliss is so pleasant that the saint swoons.

Yet you might also say that the opera’s five hours are a short time in which to observe the progress of grace in the soul of St. Francis of Assisi, which was Messiaen’s insistent intent. You could even say that time has nothing at all to do with this intently spiritual journey. It takes as long as it takes. It might be an exaggeration to say that time flies during this opera, but it is less of one to say that time seems to stop altogether.

It is hardly surprising that such a demanding opera, which had its first American staging at the San Francisco Opera on Friday night, has taken two decades since its Paris premiere to reach our shores. It is a simple, direct, unquestioning, utterly religious and dazzling ritual of music theater expressed through mind-blowingly flamboyant and complex music.

Americans, of course, typically receive just the opposite in opera--morally ambiguous, flamboyant subjects expressed with naive, unsophisticated music. And no place has been prouder of that penchant than San Francisco Opera, which brought us Jake Heggie’s “Dead Man Walking.” But this stunning, overwhelming “Saint Francois”--the first new production for which Pamela Rosenberg is responsible since becoming its general manager last season--San Francisco has suddenly, spectacularly, stopped underestimating its audience.

There are several ironies in “Saint Francois” first landing in America in the town of the saint’s Spanish namesake. When the Paris Opera commissioned its most celebrated living musician to write an opera in 1975, it was hardly prepared for the uncompromising spiritual extravaganza it got.

The work is immense, asking for an orchestra of 110 and a chorus of 150. It utilizes three Ondes Martinot, the obscure Space Agey electronic keyboard to which Messiaen had been devoted since the ‘40s, and a forest of percussion instruments. An avid student of bird song, Messiaen requires the orchestra to erupt in continual, captivating, brilliant bird song. A pioneering avant-gardist who led the movement toward the mathematical serialization in the ‘50s but who also was an unflinching sonic hedonist who loved nothing better than orgasmic sensuality, the composer somehow found a way to put it all into this devout work.

At its premiere in 1983, which Seiji Ozawa conducted, “Saint Francois” was thought of, even in Paris, as a kind of peculiarly French indulgence, an opera that, at best, would never get beyond the most distant fringes of the repertory. In fact, that might have been the case for quite some time were it not for American ingenuity and dedication. Kent Nagano, Ozawa’s assistant for the premiere, helped keep the music alive in early concert performances in the Netherlands, London and Berkeley.

But it was a celebrated production at the Salzburg Festival in 1992, the year Messiaen died, that first won over the opera world. That production, staged by Peter Sellars and featuring the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, was promised for Los Angeles Opera as well, but it never arrived.

The San Francisco production, entrusted to a German team, is nothing as elaborate as was the Salzburg staging, but despite a few Germanisms (the inevitable fedoras and trench coats), it is very well-thought out. Messiaen wrote his opera as a series of scenes in the progress of Francis’ spiritual enlightenment. Francis overcomes fear by kissing a leper, is transformed by meeting an angel, becomes one with nature penetrating the Babel of bird song in his sermon to the birds, finds the ultimate joy in agony as he receives the stigmata and moves on to higher realms at his death, which set the very War Memorial Opera House vibrating along with the tolling of otherworldly bells.

The central image in Hans Dieter-Schaal’s graceful set is a curved road, which revolves to provide grottoes and monastery rooms. Nicolas Brieger begins his production with a video production of the 1997 earthquake in Assisi, and he places the opera in a gloomy atmosphere of ruin, helping to give a bit of dramatic contrast to Francis’ saintliness. There are inappropriate sparks of whimsy. The stigmata scene, in which Francis stands erect on a rising pillar, is amazing.

Musically, this will likely go down as one of the company’s greatest achievements. It could not fit all the players Messiaen wanted in the pit, so there were fewer strings than ideal, although the orchestra of 97 still produced a magnificent noise. The Ondes Martinot and mallet instruments were placed on special platforms on the sides of the stage, effectively making them part of the drama. The company’s music director, Donald Runnicles, led a powerful, impassioned performance.

The three American principals were ideal. As Francis, Willard White grew in command throughout the performance, his baritone and his presence seeming to get stronger, the greater the demands of the musicand staging. For his receiving the stigmata and serene death in the last act, he had come to seem the personification of transcendence. Soprano Laura Aikin’s alluring Angel was an excellent advertisement for a heaven where delightful mischief and blinding splendor are not contradictions. Chris Merritt, a piercing tenor, was the frightening Leper. The six singers who portrayed the brothers in Francis’ monastery further sustained the performance’s triumphantly high level.

“Saint Francois d’Assise” repeats Tuesday, Oct. 5 and 10 at 6:30 p.m., Oct. 13 at 1 p.m. and Oct. 17 at 6:30 p.m., $24-$175, War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco (415) 864-3330.