The breakthrough for Messiaen's only opera came with the Salzburg Festival production unveiled in August 1992, Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting. Van Dam and his monks still wore habits, but Peter Sellars's production concept broke with the composer's 'realistic' Umbrian spectacle to put Dawn Upshaw's Angel in a grey business suit, while his trademark video monitors relayed associated imagery. He even invented a second Angel, one that doesn't exist in the score, who dances and mimes.
Nagano took up the reins for the 1998 Salzburg revival as captured here in DG's live recording, and there's no mistaking the remarkable authority and technical self-confidence of the results.
Van Dam's definitive Saint François is a remarkable achievement for an artist on the cusp of his sixth decade and his identification with the role is profound. Upshaw too is well cast, with just enough tonal weight to underpin her fresh, ardent, mobile singing. It's mostly plain sailing in the subsidiary roles, although Malmberg's French is still as dodgy as the choir's. The musicians of the Hallé have been drilled to the peak of perfection, closely scrutinised by vivid, upfront sound that doesn't always give their glittering sonorities a natural perspective in which to expand.
All Messiaen's trademarks are here: the birdsong, the modal rigour (especially for the word setting which is crystal clear), the basic triads given new harmonic context and heft, the post- Stravinskian dances. There are also distant echoes of Boris Godunov and Pelléas et Mélisande.
Uninitiated listeners should perhaps try Act 1 scene 3 (the curing of the leper) where the mosaic construction permits a breathtaking conjunction of ideas from timeless chant through 1960s modernism, to childlike eruptions of joy and premonitions of holy minimalism. SaintFrançois d'Assise can make Parsifal seem like an intermezzo, but it exerts a uniquely hypnotic spell. Strongly recommended.

Messiaen produced hardly any stage music and this is his only opera; his mature style is on scintillating display throughout the full four-hour work, as is his devout faith. Kent Nagano's cast and the Hallé Orchestra provide a mesmerising performance.