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Friday 9 January 2009

Lacking colour

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. Static though the work is, to a unique degree, it is all the more important that crucial moments or progresses be marked by something more than a shuffle across the stage. In the only other production I have seen of this work, in San Francisco in 2002, the staging was simple, but had at its centre a winding path, something that would have been possible at the Albert Hall, instead of having the soloists in line in front of the immense orchestra, with the chorus sitting on high and the Angel sometimes, and preferably, in the organ loft, sometimes down with Saint François.

The weakest feature musically, but also dramatically, was the underpowered Saint François of Rod Gilfry. In San Francisco Willard White was ideal: he, the character he portrayed, was authoritative as well as suitably grovelling before the wonders of creation; he was varied in tone and capable of quiet ecstasy in Act III. Unfortunately none of this was true of Gilfry, who did little more than keep going, and came perilously near to not even managing that. Saint François is an individual, as the other monks, given roughly one quality each in Messiaen’s homespun libretto, quite clearly are. Here he was at most an element in a ritual, so could never engage our interest on a personal level. His colleagues were all superior; and the Angel, Heidi Grant Murphy, recipient or bearer of some of Messiaen’s most radiant music, was mainly wonderful, more so when aloft than on platform level.

More articles from: Michael Tanner | this section

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