Saint François d’Assise (Saint Francis of Assisi, but you figured that out) is Olivier Messiaen’s only opera and his summa theologica (you’ll have to tease that one out yourself). He accepted the commission under duress, slaved on it to the exclusion of all else for eight years, fretted that it would kill him (it didn’t), and thought he would write nothing more once it was completed (but he did). He hovered over the original production, which took place at the Opéra in Paris in 1983, when he was 74, and the flat-footed, literal-minded stage pictures were just what he liked. The five-hour score had its champions, and a sprinkling of concert performances followed. But it was the second, thoroughly abstract, stage premiere—directed by Peter Sellars at the Salzburg Festival in 1992—that established the master’s Scènes franciscaines en 3 actes et 8 tableaux as a very occasionally viable theatrical proposition. This year, it’s the wizardly Romeo Castellucci (director as well as designer of sets, costumes, and lights) who gives Salzburg a new Saint François for our time. Spoiler alert: Francis kisses a leper, preaches to the birds, receives the stigmata, and dies; an angel plays the vihuela (or viol), and that’s about it. But when has Castellucci’s imagination been bound by givens? Expect pageantry of spellbinding glory, anchored by Philippe Sly’s ascetic otherworldly radiance in the title role, and an orchestral tapestry of rare splendor unfurling under the hands of Maxime Pascal, a conductor capable of liberating the soul of melody where others never suspected it exists. —Matthew Gurewitsch