Overture: St. Francis of Assisi

This is the overture to an opera I planned to write twenty-five years ago, and will probably never complete. In 1988 I wrote a Trumpet Concerto for John Wallace, in which the soloist represented the voice of the Saint - and I outlined several scenes in the work, including the famous sermon to the birds. However, I thought it hardly worth continuing with the project under the shadows of a recent monumental hagiographic opera on this subject, and the idea lay dormant until now, brought back to life by recent visits to Italy, and consequent rereading of source material including near-contemporary biographies by Belano and St. Bonaventure, Francis's own writings, and modern studies by Julien Green and Anthony Mockler.

© Sir Peter Maxwell Davies