Fragments of a disordered devotion (Preview)

Gwen John, St Thérèse of Liseux and her Sister. Photograph from Wikimedia. Following an essay on the MusikFest Berlin performance of Ligeti’s opera Le Grand Macabre, a report-essay on the world premiere of Yvonne Loriod’s oratorio Le Saint Face, touching on: Jean-Claude Touche, killed on the day of the Liberation of Paris, St Thérèse of Lisieux, Simone Weil, Olivier Messiaen, Gwen John. A preview below: the full piece is available to paying subscribers on the ambient evil of the Substack platform.Since the start of the year I’ve been working on and off on a book—which may or may not be completed—focused around Olivier Messiaen’s opera Saint François d’Assise, so I’ve spent some time of late immersed in Messiaen’s world. This summer I saw the production directed by Romeo Castellucci at the Salzburg Festival. The people sitting next to me had seen both previous Salzburg productions, in 1992 and 1998. I was still a child then. Sometime it’s easy to forget that Messiaen began working on…