Falstaff

Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff is a character as big as his belly—a bibulous, amorous, extravagant old knight, greedy for all of life’s pleasures. In him Giuseppe Verdi finally found a reason to return to comedy after a long career of tragedies. The Italian composer’s late, great opera—the last he would write—is an Indian summer of a work, full of unexpected warmth and wit. The project reunited Verdi with his finest collaborator, librettist Arrigo Boito, who distilled episodes from both Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor into a tight ensemble comedy. We follow Sir John as he attempts (persistently and unsuccessfully) to woo multiple married women, who band together to teach both him and their jealous husbands a lesson they won’t forget. Plunging straight into comic intrigue with no time for the niceties of an overture, Falstaff keeps up this breathless pace from opening dialogue right through to the whirlwind final ensemble. Text drives all, and Verdi’s score shadows it closely, capturing not just the strutting, self-pitying pomp of Falstaff himself (Act II’s “Va, Vecchio John”) but the jingle of money in an over-filled pocket, the cynical, chattering back-and-forth of the scheming “Merry Wives” and the magical, moonlit beauty of a “fairy” gathering at Herne’s Oak (“Sul fil d’un soffio etesio”). “All the world is a joke”, the finale tells us; after hearing this elegant punchline of an opera, it’s hard to disagree.