Falstaff was the culmination of Verdi’s long career as an opera
composer. He believed he had laid down his compositional pen after
Aida in 1871 but nearly a decade later, persuaded by his publisher,
he embarked on a rewriting of
Simon Boccanegra. This involved his
working with Arrigo Boito, an accomplished librettist and also a composer.
This was an association Verdi came to relish. Ricordi, his publisher, and
Boito subtly pointed Verdi towards Shakespeare’s
Otello. Verdi
loved and revered Shakespeare above any other poet. Slowly, via constant
personal contact and communication,
Otello was written. It was
premiered at La Scala in 1887. Verdi was then 74 years of age and really did
think he had finished operatic composition. He had not allowed for Boito.
Three years after the premiere of
Otello Verdi wrote to a friend
"What can I tell you? I’ve wanted to write a comic opera for forty
years, and I’ve known The Merry Wives of Windsor for fifty … however, the
usual buts and I don’t know if I will ever finish it … I am enjoying
myself." Boito’s vital contribution in enabling Verdi to match
Shakespeare was in his capacity for drawing out a taut libretto from the
plays concerned. Boito had reduced
Otello by 90% and in
Falstaff he reduces the twenty-three characters in Shakespeare’s
The Merry Wives of Windsor to just ten. Verdi wrote
Falstaff, his third opera based on Shakespeare, for his own
enjoyment. Verdi’s final opera, "my little enjoyment" as he called
it, was all he could have hoped and was a triumph at its premiere at La
Scala on 9 February 1893. The greatest Italian composer ever was 80 years of
age.
The musical form of
Falstaff follows that of
Otello, the
music moving constantly, the concerted ensembles interrupted only
occasionally by an aria or duet. Verdi’s orchestration in
Falstaff,
with its final fugue, presents challenges to even the best of the conductors
with a natural feel for the Verdian melodic line and idiom. In this
performance, the veteran Zubin Mehta shows signs of his age. He was perhaps
influenced by the setting in the
Casa di Riposo per Musicisti, the
rest home for musicians Verdi had built and endowed in Milan and which
opened in 1900. The dreaming and languor of old age is the theme at the
start as the cast in modern dress fuss round Falstaff in his pullover as he
nods off. When Director Damiano Michieletto takes over with his dream, or
nightmare, to a more recent, more contemporary date, the whole of what
follows is Falstaff’s dream of undertaking the role of Falstaff and
including projections of him in the role. The bad news is that gimmick
follows gimmick with cast popping up out of trap-doors and a mixing of
generations. Verdi’s conception in this, his final great work gets lost. It
is a concept not unusual, I gather, in the cinema. However, in an opera
where there are tightly defined roles and interactions there is in this
instance much confusion, at least for this viewer who, with all modesty,
knows the work intimately.
A further insult is the intrusion of people who do not fit. The love duet
for the young Fenton and Nannetta are doubled by an aged pair. The converse
is true for Mistress Quickly who is seen as a young nurse. Gimmick follows
gimmick as Verdi and Boito’s masterful creation gets the modern director
concept treatment. Well, I suppose it is Salzburg and the punters will pay
whatever it costs for whatever rubbish is put before them, much as at
Pesaro. On the other hand, 2013, the year of this staging at Salzburg, was
Verdi’s bicentenary. In their tribute to the great operatic composer with
this production, and concert performances of
Nabucco and
Giovanni D’Arco, the latter with Netrebko and Domingo trying to be
a Verdi baritone (review forthcoming), Salzburg significantly failed to do
the great composer justice in respect of the staging, and in too many
instances the casting as well.
Falstaff is Ambrogio Maestri’s calling-card and he at least
does himself justice vocally in this
mish-mash. There are at least four other productions available on video
featuring him, that from La Scala in 2001 under Muti still being one of the
best (Euroarts 2051728). As well as this version, I guess there will soon be
another of the updated setting shared by the Met and Covent Garden. Maestri
has so many tricks, ticks and asides he really could play the role in his
sleep. In the meantime this is more nightmare than dream.
Robert J Farr
Previous review (Blu-ray):
Paul Corfield Godfrey
