Well even in the RAH two of the Ondes Martenot were in boxes.

You don't have to enjoy it, Jim ... but in terms of what you say, do you equally feel put off by the prospect of one of the Bach Passions, for example? Maybe you should approach it with that thought in mind.

For me the problem with SFA isn't the religiosity as such, it's the fact that (indeed as a result of Messiaen's attitude towards his subject matter) there's absolutely no dramatic tension anywhere in it. Some of the music is very beautiful, granted, but there is never any doubt about anything - Francis' character is indistinguishably pious throughout, you know the leper will be healed, and so on. So it seems on the one hand to have the trappings of a "story" (as opposed to some less traditional operas like Stockhausen's, which don't), but on the other hand there's very little of it compared to the huge dimensions of the work and it's completely predictable. Compare it with Parsifal which is, despite some similarities, full of contradictions and tensions. Messiaen's music contains no contradictions. This I sometimes find fascinating and inspiring, but not in this work.

Hmm. I can see that witnessing a staged performance could have that kind of effect, and I dare say I'd have been impressed had I been able to attend the RAH performance too, but I have no problem listening to Wagner in audio-only recordings (the pictures are better, as they say), or Bruckner for that matter, and I haven't heard much by either of them in the flesh. For me this lack of tension seems somehow to be immanent in the music rather than just in the prosaic sense of "nothing much happens" (being the admirer of Beckett's work that I am, that would hardly in itself be a problem). Note that I'm not trying to say I think there's anything "wrong" with SFA, just that it doesn't affect me in the way many other Messiaen pieces do.

Here's a funny thing though. I've mentioned before not being so keen on Messiaen's vocal music. I was thinking about this issue earlier on and wondering why my reaction to different Messiaen pieces is so different given ths consistency of his stylistic evolution. It isn't just voices though. I think it's also connected with his use of strings, with which he can easily tend towards the schmalzy (violins in octaves for example), which is perhaps why I'm not so keen on SFA, Eclairs sur l'au-delà, Quatuor pour la fin du temps for example, and why I'm more drawn to Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, Couleurs de la cité céleste and Des canyons aux étoiles... (which has a full wind and percussion section but only 13 strings).

De gustibus non est disputandum, as Sydney Grew would say. 

I'm not in the remotest danger of being anything but an atheist myself and if you're up for Hildegard then I would suggest something very gorgeous, essentially meditative, apparently naive but (to me anyway) totally compelling could well be the thing for you.

Even if it does last four hours. (Still, each single scene is a manageable length and makes sense in itself.)

That's interesting. It is precisely the lack of those things that appeals to me about both Parsifal and St Francis, that is, I love Parsifal for the things that make it completely unlike Tristan, rather than the things about it which are similar.

I absolutely love the total absence of dramatic interest. The experience of St Francis is one of progressing through an extremely slow ritual, in which the vast canvas of time plays a geographical, rather than chronological, role. More than anything else, though, this opera is about the experience of faith, rather than the object of faith, and doesn't need contradictions and tensions: it's above them.

I can't help considering the discussion about the Britten Parables elsewhere as I read some of this; three operas, each in a single act, with stage conventions derived from Noh theatre, intended specifically for church performance, the first with a Japanese classic text realised through a Christian viewpoint, the other two retellings of biblical stories. They're much smaller, shorter and faster moving than Messiaen's work, yet they share something of the same slow-burn intensity, particularly the first, Curlew River, the one transplanted from the Noh play Sumidagawa.

 During one of the interval talks, Messiaen's interest in studying opera, especially Mozart opera, was mentioned: in particular his love for and interest in the great ensembles. Yet St François is completely free of this usually vital component: the use of ensembles has been eschewed, almost as if one of the concepts behind the piece is mediaeval monody, rather than later polyphony, albeit in a highly decorated setting. It's opera as protracted devotion (a concept not exactly alien to other example of his work): normal rules just don't apply for a piece that has to be taken on its own unique terms.

Messiaen in fact explicitly mentions Nō theatre in the context of St François, especially the high woodwind music that announces the Angel. I do hope that made it to the interval talk as well!