Just after their wedding in 1936, Olivier Messiaen wrote a series of nine poems for his first wife, Claire Delbos, who went by the nickname “Mi”—they are songs of heavenly love and gratitude but also of doubt and awe of the institution of marriage, which was sacred to the devout Catholic Messiaen. Australian soprano Siobhan Stagg and pianist Timothy Young, both heard at the Pierre Boulez Saal for the first time, have chosen these Poèmes pour Mi as the centerpiece of their program, framing them with songs by Claude Debussy, one of Messiaen’s major inspirations, and Henri Duparc, whose mélodies had a significant influence on the development of this specifically French variation on the art song genre.