Saint François d'Assise (opera)

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Opera dates
Title: Saint Francis of Assisi
Original title: Saint François d'Assise
Giotto di Bondone: The Sermon on the Bird, around 1295

Giotto di Bondone : The Sermon on the Bird, around 1295

Shape: Opera in three acts and eight pictures
Original language: French
Music: Olivier Messiaen
Libretto : Olivier Messiaen
Premiere: November 28, 1983
Place of premiere: Salle Garnier of the Paris Opera
Playing time: approx. 4 ¼ hours
Place and time of the action: Italy, early 13th century
people
  • L'Ange, the angel ( soprano )
  • Saint François, Saint Francis ( baritone )
  • Le Lépreux, the leper ( tenor )
  • Brother Léon (baritone)
  • Brother Massée (tenor)
  • Brother Élie (tenor)
  • Brother Bernard ( bass )
  • Brother Sylvestre (bass, possibly choir soloist)
  • Brother Rufin (bass, possibly choir soloist)
  • Brothers ( choir , bass)
  • Voice of Christ (ten-part mixed choir with 150 singers)

Saint François d'Assise (German: St. Francis [iskus] of Assisi ) with the subtitle Scènes franciscaines ( Francis scenes ) is an opera in three acts and eight pictures by Olivier Messiaen . It premiered on November 28, 1983 in the Salle Garnier of the Paris Opera .

action

first act

1st picture. “La Croix” - The Cross

A street; in the middle at the back between two rows of dense dark green cypress trees a staircase which leads in many steps to a large black cross that stands out against the sky.

Frère Léon and Saint François enter one after the other "in the manner of the Friars Minor " from the right side of the street. Léon expresses his fear of the dark and death. François explains to him the essence of “perfect joy”, which does not come from the usual virtues such as miracles, science or successful conversions, but consists in patiently enduring every humiliation inflicted. All other gifts come from God and therefore cannot bring glory to man. An invisible choir confirms his words: "If you want to follow in my footsteps, deny yourself, take your cross and follow me."

2nd picture. "Les Laudes" - The hymns of praise

The interior of a small, very gloomy monastery church with three vaults one behind the other; in the middle in front of a small altar a red glowing lamp symbolizing the presence of the holy of holies.

Saint François and the monks Sylvestre, Rufin and Bernard pray on their knees - François on the right, the brothers opposite him on the left. The choir can be seen dimly on both sides of the stage. After praising God for his gifts, François prays to meet a leper, to overcome his own disgust for illness and to be able to love him - God created ugliness too.

3rd picture. “Le Baiser au Lépreux” - The kiss for the leper

A low room with a bench and two stools in the leprosy ward of the San Salvatore Hospital near Assisi; on the right in the background an open window to a dark alley.

When you open the curtain you only see the leper at first. The choir is also on stage, but practically invisible. The leper laments his torturous life when Saint François enters and greets him kindly. François advises the sick person to accept his suffering and see it as repentance. Suddenly an angel appears in the window, which can be recognized by the audience through the special lighting, but remains invisible to François and the leper. You only hear his voice: “Leper, your heart accuses you, but God is bigger than your heart.” When François explains these words to the leper, the sick man regrets his wailing and asks for forgiveness. François also apologizes for not loving him enough. He kisses the leper whose illness miraculously disappears. The healed man dances for a while for joy, then sits down with François and admits that he is not worthy of the healing. Both pray silently. The choir declares that those who have loved much will be forgiven for everything.

Second act

4th picture. "L'Ange voyageur" ​​- The traveling angel

La Verna, Santuario de la Verna 002

On the mountain of La Verna ; on the left a small, simple monastery hall with a large open gate; in the middle a path through the forest with beech, pine and rough rocks; behind blue shimmering mountains; on the right a small grotto.

Léon, still singing of his fear, approaches the hall with a spade and a wooden board. He intends to build a bridge and asks Frère Massée to take over the gate. An angel appears "like a wanderer" at the gate and knocks timidly, which nevertheless creates a tremendous noise. Massée opens the door and explains to him the usual way of knocking. The angel wants to see François, but wishes to ask Frère Élie a question beforehand. Élie is indignant about the disturbance. He refuses to answer the angel when he is asked whether he has “put off the old man” in order to “find his true face” and throws him out. The angel knocks again in the same way as before. When Massée opens, he asks him to talk to Frère Bernard, to whom he asks the same question. Bernard replies that he “left the world” in order to be able to give God the correct answer after his death. The angel praises him. He explains that in order not to disturb François, he wants to speak to him in other ways than with words. He makes a small gesture, the gate opens, and he floats out. Only now do Bernard and Massée realize that the mysterious visitor was “perhaps an angel”.

5th picture. "L'Ange musicien" - The angel making music

Saint François kneels praying in front of the grotto on the right. He thanks God for the sun, the moon and the stars and asks to be able to taste "the ineffable festival" that God has intended for his saints. A kestrel calls. At the same time the angel appears from the left on the path. He is surrounded by light, carries a vial and a round arch and seems to float as if in a dance. François recognizes him immediately. The angel announces that God will answer him through music and begins to play - slowly at first in glissandi , then more and more lively. As night falls, parts of the angel gradually become invisible. The last thing to go is his right arm, left hand and viole. François has fainted meanwhile. Brother Léon finds him and calls, concerned, for Massée and Bernard. But François is unharmed. He was just overwhelmed by the heavenly music. If the angel had played any longer, however, his soul would have left his body “with unbearable sweetness”.

6th picture. “Le Prêche aux oiseaux” - The Bird Sermon

The Eremo delle Carceri

The Eremo delle Carceri ; a sunlit path leads over a small bridge and like a balcony along a ravine, from which protrudes a huge oak tree with wide black mossy branches, the leaves of which glisten in the sun; in the background against the blue sky are the hills of Monte Subasio and San Rufino, overgrown with green oaks ; the branches and leaves create patterns of light and shadow along the way.

As Massee admired the many birds in the area, Saint Francois called him names, including the blackcap ( "Capinera"), and complements the Birds of the islands of New Caledonia , which he knows from his dreams. The two listen to the singing (“Little Bird Concert”). François then gives them a sermon under the oak tree, in which he asks them to thank their Creator for his good deeds. After the final blessing, the birds fall silent for a moment before they start singing again (“Big Bird Concert”). Then they fly away in four groups in the four cardinal directions, resulting in the image of a cross in the sky. Massée interprets this as a sign that her own preaching should also spread in all directions. François urges him to rely on Divine Providence.

Third act

7th picture. "Les Stigmates" - The stigmata

The "Sasso Spicco"

Jumbled rocks on the mountain of La Verna; a cave under a rock overhang, to which a staircase leads; on the right a narrow path to the rock face with the large, pointed “Sasso Spicco”; everything is covered with black-green moss, fissured and furrowed; some black sky over the rocks; late night.

Saint François kneels in the middle of the stage. He prays to be able to feel the pain of Christ and his love for people himself. The voice of Christ answers in the form of an invisible choir that François should receive the five stigmata and become a “second host” himself. A giant cross is projected in the background. Red and purple lights illuminate the stage. The choir sings: "I am the Alpha and the Omega". Five rays of light hit François' hands, feet and right side from the cross. While the choir sings the vowels "a" and "o", the blood-red wounds become visible. It is getting light. The stage is shining red-orange and the cross is golden. The choir confirms François' holiness: “If you carry the cross with a happy heart, it will carry you in turn.” François freezes, arms raised, “as if in ecstasy”.

8th picture. “La Mort et la nouvelle Vie” - Death and new life

The Portiuncula Chapel

The small Portiuncula chapel in Santa Maria degli Angeli with black vaults, tiled floors and roughly hewn stone walls; late evening.

All the brothers, including Sylvestre, Rufin, Bernard, Massée and Léon, have gathered around the dying Saint François. He says goodbye to the world and the monks. Nevertheless, he praises God for the "brother death [...] from which no one can escape". The angel appears again, this time only visible to François himself and asks him to remember. Next to him appears the healed and richly dressed leper, whom only François can also see. He died a "holy death" and will lead François to paradise together with the angel. Bells ring. François dies in a state of enlightenment: “Lord! Music and poetry have brought me to you: through the image, through the symbol and through lack of truth. […] Blind me forever with your overabundance of truth. ”Frère Léon compares François' death to the flying of a butterfly from the cross. All the lights go out and the choir steps forward. At the point where François lay before, a single intense and steadily increasing light emerges, which at the end of the act becomes “dazzling and unbearable”. The choir praises the resurrection of the dead with the alleluia.

layout

Messiaen gave specific tips for the actors' gestures and costumes, which are based on works of fine art . He found a model for Saint François in the frescoes by Cimabue and Giotto di Bondone in Assisi. The leper is reproduced from the picture panel The Temptation of Saint Anthony on Matthias Grünewald's Isenheimer Altar , the angel of the Annunciation by Fra Angelico .

orchestra

The orchestral line-up for the opera includes the following instruments:

music

Saint François d'Assise is Olivier Messiaen's only opera . It is considered to be his "Opus summum". With its length of well over four hours, the largely static acting plot and the seemingly endless repetitions of the theological statements, it requires a lot of patience from the audience. Even at the premiere, it responded with boos to the three-quarters of an hour recitation of bird names by St. Francis in the sixth picture. Only the third and seventh pictures are dramatically more sophisticated.

Rudolf Maschka pointed out that in this late work Messiaen viewed Saint Francis as an alter ego of himself. His endeavor to “achieve closeness to God through music and poetry” applies more to the composer than to the saint. In this respect, Messiaen wrote his own hagiography with the opera . François' last words before his death can be seen as an artistic creed of Messiaen. In the operatic plot there are also further parallels between François and Jesus Christ. Olivier Messiaen summarized the intention of his opera as follows:

“To portray the progressive stages of grace in the soul of St. Francis. I left out everything that contained no colors, no miracles, no birds, no piety and no faith - the figure of Pietro Bernadone as well as that of St. Clare or the wolf of Gubbio. "

- Olivier Messiaen

Messiaen eschewed psychological interpretations of the characters as well as (except for the scene with the leper) conflicts between the characters. Dramaturgically, the work focuses on the figure of St. Francis, to whom all other people are subordinate. Most of the time, like an oratorio , the choir stands outside the plot. Only occasionally (especially in the seventh picture) does he take on the role of the voice of Christ.

The opera is divided into eight self-contained pictures, each comprising several smaller sections.

The music uses all the techniques of his tonal language developed by Messiaen. Michael Stegemann described it as a "sound orgy of wind cascades, woodwind layers and flickering strings, in which bird voices, Gregorian chants , non-European modes come together to form that unique 'monde sonore' that distinguishes Messiaen's art". More than twenty bird calls appear here for the first time in his work. The choral movements are particularly carefully worked out. The roles of Saint François and Engels are among the most difficult in modern music theater. The vocal passages are often unaccompanied or alternate with instrumental sections.

Each character in the opera has its own theme with specific timbres and its own bird call. Saint François and the Angel have several of them. The saint himself the reputation of being blackcap assigned as his bird emblem. His dying motif can be heard with the words "Music and poetry have brought me to you". There are around fifteen of these leitmotifs in total . The symbol of the cross corresponds to a sequence of two characteristic chords, and joy corresponds to a short fanfare. The latter is borrowed from Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony . Saint François' most striking motif consists of a “strong up and down unison of the strings”. It can be heard for the first time in the first picture. The leitmotifs are determined by intervals, harmony, rhythm and timbre (instrument combinations). However, they are mostly static and apart from François' string theme, they are not developed any further.

The tritone interval is not Messiaen preferred one, but in the function as dominant , but because he "nicest, gentlest and calmest interval" is for the holding. The orchestral instruments develop their typical colors similar to the registers and mixtures of the organ. The timbre technique is based on a method by Claude Debussy , the application of which Messiaen described in 1944 in his Technique de mon langage musical . The rhythmic structures are dominated by irrational divisions such as quintuplets or septuplets, elongated note values ​​(“valeurs ajoutées”) and symmetrical structures (“rhythmes non-rétrogradables”). The sound language shows strong contrasts. The almost pure triads of the Ondes Martenot to the song of the angel are contrasted with constructivist procedures in the sense of serialism when receiving the stigmata. At the final picture with the blindingly bright light, a radiant C major triad sounds, which is only sharpened by the note A and trills.

There are two large-scale orchestral interludes that are played with the curtain open: "La danse du Lépreux" ("The dance of the leper," I / 3) and "Le grand concert d'oiseaux" ("The great bird concert", II / 6). The former is derived from the motif with which the leper had reviled God before he was healed. The latter uses aleatoric techniques: after the conductor's intervention, each musician plays at a self-selected tempo.

Work history

Messiaen received the request for the opera in 1975 from Rolf Liebermann, the then artistic director of the Paris Opera . Since he had never composed for the stage up to this point, he hesitated to accept. He had been interested in the subject of Saint Francis since his youth, when he wrote works by Gabriel Pierné (the orchestral piece Paysages franciscains from 1920), Vincent d'Indy ( La légende de Saint-Christophe, 1920), Claude Debussy ( Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien , 1911) or André Caplet ( Le miroir de Jésus, mystères du Rosaire, 1923), who brought a religious theme to a secular stage.

As with his other vocal works, Messiaen wrote the libretto himself. It is not only a means of transport for music, but also a personal religious creed. As a template he used the 1228 by Thomas von Celano on behalf of Pope Gregory IX. written Vita of St. Francis, works by Bonaventura and the legend collection of the Fioretti di San Francesco from the 14th century. He took some of the texts of St. Francis verbatim and also added quotes from the Bible.

Messiaen composed the music between 1975 and 1983. In a first phase of work until 1979 he worked simultaneously on the text and the music. He started with the fourth picture, then composed the second and third, the fifth and seventh, and the first and eighth. Finally, he took the bird sermon in the sixth picture. In a second phase from 1979 to 1983 he orchestrated the work. The first performance was initially scheduled for 1982, with Ruggero Raimondi in the title role. Messiaen also wanted to design and direct the sets himself. The Paris Opera rejected this request. However, Messiaen was able to act as an advisor to ensure that his intentions were taken into account.

The first performance took place on November 28, 1983 in the Salle Garnier of the Paris Opera , whose orchestra and choir were under the musical direction of Seiji Ozawa . Directed by Sandro Sequi. The solo parts were sung by Christiane Eda-Pierre (L'Ange), José van Dam (Saint François), Kenneth Riegel (Le Lépreux), Michèl Philippe (Frère Léon), Georges Gautier (Frère Massée), Michel Sénéchal (Frère Élie) and Jean -Philippe Courtis (Brother Bernard). The stage design by Giuseppe Crisolini-Malatesta consisted of sliding Japanese walls with images of devotional objects, and the direction was also reminiscent of the Japanese Nō theater. The result largely met Messiaen's expectations. The light after Francis' death was not bright enough for him, despite all his efforts. In addition, the cast had to be reduced for space reasons, which is why only 100 instead of 150 choir singers and twelve instead of sixteen first and second violins each took part. The woodwinds and keyboard instruments were placed on scaffolding outside the orchestra pit, the brass and Ondes Martenots in the boxes of the proscenium . In November and December 1983 there were a total of eight performances, which were received mixed by the public, but took place without public protests.

In the following years, due to the huge cast and oversized length, mostly only individual scenes were performed in concert, for example in 1985 in Salzburg with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in the title role under the direction of Lothar Zagrosek . This production met with almost unanimous approval. In 1988 the Opéra de Lyon played the complete work with David Wilson-Johnson as Saint François in concert. Kent Nagano conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra .

A production by Peter Sellars at the Salzburg Festival in 1992 in the Felsenreitschule with José van Dam in the title role and Dawn Upshaw as angel attracted a lot of attention . The conductor was Esa-Pekka Salonen . The abstract sets were by George Tsypin .

The Leipzig Opera played the opera in 1997 as a German premiere under the direction of Jiří Kout with Frode Olsen in the title role. Gottfried Pilz was responsible for direction and equipment . The American premiere was staged by Hans Dieter Schaal (stage), Nicolas Brieger (director) and Andrea Schmidt-Futterer (costumes) in 2002 at the San Francisco Opera . Willard White (Saint François) and Laura Aikin sang here under the musical direction of Donald Runnicles . Also in 2002 there was a production by Daniel Libeskind at the Deutsche Oper Berlin , whose set consisted of 49 rotating cubes.

In 2003 the opera was performed in the Ruhrtriennale in the Jahrhunderthalle Bochum (conductor: Sylvain Cambreling , installation: Ilja Kabakow , scene: Giuseppe Frigeni, Saint François: José van Dam, angel: Heidi Grant Murphy ). The production was also played in the Madrid Arena in 2011 with Alejandro Marco-Buhrmester in the title role and Camilla Tilling as Engel .

The Paris Opera put the work on the program again in 2004 - this time at the Opéra Bastille (conductor: Sylvain Cambreling, staging: Stanislas Nordey , Saint François: José Van Dam, angel: Christine Schäfer ). The performances in Salzburg 1992, Bochum, Paris and Madrid were each put on the program by the artistic director Gerard Mortier , who campaigned intensively for the piece.

Pierre Audi staged the work in 2008 for the Amsterdam Muziektheater . Ingo Metzmacher was the conductor, Rod Gilfry sang the title role and Camilla Tilling the angel. A recording was released on DVD.

In 2011 there was a production at the Bavarian State Opera as part of the Munich Opera Festival (conductor: Kent Nagano , staging: Hermann Nitsch , Saint François: Paul Gay, angel: Christine Schäfer).

In 2018, Artistic Director Karsten Wiegand staged the work at the Staatstheater Darmstadt (conductor: Johannes Harneit ; Saint François: Georg Festl , Engel: Katharina Persicke). He placed the choir in the seventh and eighth picture in the form of a cross in the middle of the audience.

Recordings

literature

  • Vincent Benitez: Pitch Organization and Dramatic Design in “Saint François d'Assise” by Olivier Messiaen. PhD. Diss. Indiana University, Bloomington / IN 2001.
  • Vincent Benitez: Messiaen and Aquinas. In: Andrew Shenton (ed.): Messiaen the Theologian. Ashgate, Farnham / Burlington / VT 2010, pp. 101–126.
  • Anette Bossut: Répétition et variation dans le livret "Saint Françoise d'Assise" d'Olivier Messiaen. In: Biancamaria Brumana / Galiano Ciliberti (eds.): Musica e immagine. Tra iconografia e mondo dell'opera. Studi in onore di Massimo Bogianckino. Olschki, Florenz 1993, pp. 233-242.
  • Siglind Bruhn : Messiaen's Interpretations of Holiness and Trinity: Echoes of Medieval Theology in the Oratorio, Organ Meditations, and Opera. Pendragon, Hillsdale / NY 2008.
  • Siglind Bruhn: Traces of a Thomistic “De musica” in the Compositions of Olivier Messiaen. In: Logos. A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 11/2008, pp. 16-56.
  • Christopher Dingle: Frescoes and legends: the sources and background of "Saint François d'Assise". In: Christopher Dingle (Ed.): Olivier Messiaen: Music, Art and Literature. Ashgate, Aldershot 2007, pp. 301-322.
  • Robert Fallon: Two paths to paradise: reform in Messiaen's “Saint François d'Assise”. In: Robert Sholl (Ed.): Messiaen Studies. CUP, Cambridge 2008, pp. 206-231.
  • Camille Crunelle Hill: The Synthesis of Messiaen's Musical Language in his Opera "Saint François d'Assise". Diss. University of Kentucky, Lexington / KY 1996.
  • Peter Hill / Nigel Simeone: Messiaen. Yale University Press, New Haven / CT 2005; German edition: Peter Hill, Nigel Simeone: Messiaen. Translated from the English by Birgit Irgang. Schott, Mainz 2007, ISBN 978-3-7957-0591-6 , pp. 320–359.
  • Ute Jung-Kaiser (Ed.): “Laudato si, mi Signore, per sora nostra matre terra”. On the aesthetics and spirituality of the “song of the sun” in music, art, religion, science, literature, film and photography. Peter Lang, Bern 2002.
  • Theo Hirsbrunner : Olivier Messiaen. Life and work. Laaber, Laaber 1988, 2nd edition 1999.
  • Theo Hirsbrunner: The “Canticle of the Sun” in Olivier Messiaen's opera “Saint François d'Assise”. In: Ute Jung-Kaiser (Ed.): “Laudato si, mi Signore, per sora nostra matre terra”. On the aesthetics and spirituality of the “song of the sun” in music, art, religion, science, literature, film and photography. Peter Lang, Bern 2002, pp. 211-218.
  • Stefan Keym: Color and Time - Investigations into the music theater structure and semantics of Olivier Messiaen's “Saint François d'Assise”. Olms, Hildesheim 2002.
  • Stefan Keym: "The art of the most intensive contrast": Olivier Messiaen's mosaic form up to its apotheosis in "Saint François d'Assise". In: Robert Sholl (Ed.): Messiaen Studies. CUP, Cambridge 2008, pp. 188-205.
  • Stefan Keym / Peter Jost (eds.): Olivier Messiaen and the "French tradition". Dohr, Cologne 2013.
  • Aloyse Michaely: The music of Olivier Messiaen. Investigations into the overall work. Dieter Wagner, Hamburg 1987.
  • Aloyse Michaely: Olivier Messiaens “Saint François d'Assise”. The musical-theological sum of a life's work. Stroemfeld, Frankfurt 2006.
  • Claude Samuel: Musique et couleur. Nouveaux entretiens avec Olivier Messiaen. Belfond, Paris 1986.
  • Andrew Shenton (Ed.): Messiaen the Theologian. Ashgate, Farnham / Burlington / VT 2010.
  • Richard Taruskin : Sacred Entertainments. In: Cambridge Opera Journal 15/2003, pp. 109-126.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ According to the composer, the plot of the opera describes "the gradual development of holiness in François' soul". Nevertheless, he is called "Saint François" in the libretto from the start.
  2. ↑ After the 8th chapter of Fioretti. See Hirsbrunner, p. 196.
  3. ↑ After the hymn of praise for the creatures of Franz von Assisi.
  4. ↑ After the 25th chapter of Fioretti.
  5. ↑ After the 4th chapter of Fioretti.
  6. ^ After the 2nd Considération sur les Stigmates.
  7. ↑ Loosely based on the 16th chapter of Fioretti.
  8. ^ After the 3rd Considération sur les Stigmates.
  9. ↑ Triangles and claves should be of different pitch.
  10. ↑ A total of two sets of tubular bells are required.
  11. ↑ The "geophone" is a sand machine invented by Messiaen. It is a flat drum filled with lead grains made of a wooden ring and two skins 20 centimeters apart. The sound created by panning is similar to the rolling of sand and pebbles in the ocean surf.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Robert Maschka: Saint François de'Assise. In: Rudolf Kloiber , Wulf Konold , Robert Maschka: Handbuch der Oper. 9th, expanded, revised edition 2002. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag / Bärenreiter, ISBN 3-423-32526-7 , pp. 420–426.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Theo Hirsbrunner : Saint François d'Assise. In: Piper's Encyclopedia of Musical Theater . Volume 4: Works. Massine - Piccinni. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1991, ISBN 3-492-02414-9 , pp. 108-111.
  3. ↑ a b Theo Hirsbrunner : Olivier Messiaen. Life and work. Laaber-Verlag, Laaber 1988. 2nd, supplemented edition 1999, ISBN 3-89007-139-2 , pp. 192-200.
  4. ^ A b c Michael Stegemann: Saint François d'Assise. In: Attila Csampai , Dietmar Holland : Opera guide. E-book. Rombach, Freiburg im Breisgau 2015, ISBN 978-3-7930-6025-3 .
  5. ^ Paul Griffiths:  Saint François d'Assise. In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).
  6. ^ A b c Clive Bennett: Saint François de'Assise. In: Amanda Holden (Ed.): The Viking Opera Guide. Viking, London / New York 1993, ISBN 0-670-81292-7 , pp. 655-657.
  7. ↑ a b c d Ulrich Schreiber : Opera guide for advanced learners. 20th Century II. German and Italian Opera after 1945, France, Great Britain. Bärenreiter, Kassel 2005, ISBN 3-7618-1437-2 , pp. 497-501.
  8. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Olivier Messiaen. In: Andreas Ommer: Directory of all complete opera recordings (= Zeno.org . Volume 20). Directmedia, Berlin 2005.
  9. ↑ a b c d e Saint François d'Assise. In: Harenberg opera guide. 4th edition. Meyers Lexikonverlag, 2003, ISBN 3-411-76107-5 , pp. 528-529.
  10. ^ A b András Batta: Opera. Composers, works, performers. hfullmann, Königswinter 2009, ISBN 978-3-8331-2048-0 , pp. 310-311.
  11. ↑ Stefan Schmöe The unbearably beautiful presence of the divine. Review of the performance in the Jahrhunderthalle Bochum 2003. In: Online Musik Magazin accessed on October 21, 2017.
  12. ^ Mysterious Six Hours: Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise in Madrid. Review of the 2011 Madrid Arena performance. In: Seen and Heard International, July 15, 2011, accessed October 21, 2017.
  13. ↑ Performance dates of the Opéra Bastille 2004 on MémOpéra, accessed on October 21, 2017.
  14. ↑ a b Peter Hagmann: Music theater, stepped out of itself. Review of the performances in Madrid and Munich 2011. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , July 9, 2011, accessed on October 21, 2017.
  15. ↑ a b Review of the DVD of the Muziektheater Amsterdam. on Opus Klassiek, accessed October 21, 2017.
  16. ^ Saint François d'Assise. Performance information from the Staatstheater Darmstadt, accessed on September 10, 2018.
  17. ↑ Werner Häußner: Review of the performance in Darmstadt 2018. In: Online Merker, September 10, 2018, accessed on September 18, 2018.