Verdi's final opera Falstaff is considered to be technically his best work, although it has never achieved the wide appeal of his earlier works such as Rigoletto, Aida or La Traviata. After its premiere at La Scala, Milan, in 1893, and the following years at Covent Garden, London, and Metropolitan, New York, it had been mostly neglected, but it has enjoyed a gradual comeback in the past few decades. This year, maybe in honor of the 130th anniversary of its premiere, Falstaff is taking a prominent place in the repertory of the world's major opera venues: The Metropolitan, Maryland Lyric Opera, San José and Palm Beach operas in the US; Greek National Opera in Athens, Hamburg and Nürnberg operas in Germany and Opéra Nice in France, to name a few. Salzburg Festival in Austria also features Falstaff this summer.
According to some accounts, Verdi wrote his last opera to challenge his own creativity, regardless of whether the audience would like it or not. It was only his second attempt at comedy after the first one, Un giorno di regno, flopped (I still enjoy it regardless). Based on Shakespeare's play Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff features an aging fat, impoverished and dishonest knight who may have once been slim, attractive and honorable. But like many of us, he still sees himself as he was in his youth. It takes drenching in the Thames River and a scare in the "haunted" forrest to disabuse him of his delusions. I still have the urge to shop at Forever 21, but inevitably get drenched when I find out that nothing fits.
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| MDLO's Performance of Falstaff, Music Center at Strathmore, Bethesda, MD |
Maryland Lyric Opera's Falstaff was semi-staged, with only the most basic props: a few chairs, bench, table and the iconic wicker laundry chest. With the orchestra taking most of the Strathmore music hall's stage, there was no room for elaborate scenery or physical antics, which shifted focus to the music. The singers moved along a narrow strip of stage front while the chorus took the balcony above the orchestra.
After a quick instrumental introduction, we meet Sir Falstaff deeply in his cups at the Garter Inn, ordering his followers Bardolfo and Pistola to deliver identical love letters to two wealthy married women that he plans to seduce in order to get into their husband's coffers. The dissipated knight is buried in debt and desperate. Bass-baritone Mark Delavan's good-natured eye twinkle made him a likable Falstaff even when he was plotting the worst of the shenanigans. Delavan's voice sounded appropriate for the character's age. The knight's minions resent being treated as servants and decide to betray his plan.
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| Brian Major as Ford and Mark Delavan as Falstaff in MDLO's Falstaff |
The scene moves from the inn to the home of wealthy and beautiful Alice Ford, who has an excessively jealous husband. It must have been her longtime grievance because they've been married for some time and have a daughter of marriageable age. Clearly, Alice is fed up and needs to teach her husband a lesson once and for all.
Teresa Perotta, who replaced Mary Feminear in the role of Alice on Sunday, was the evening's best surprise. Her mellifluous soprano was strong enough to soar above the orchestra, which sometimes overpowered other singers, especially those with lighter voices like soprano Rachel Blaustein as Alice's daughter Nannetta and tenor Yi Li as Fenton. Alice also sings most of her music in ensemble, so her role requires a singer with the ability to meld with others. Perotta displayed all the necessary qualities.
Together with her friends Meg Page and Mistress Quickly, Alice learns about Sir Falstaff's nefarious plan and the women decide to punish him. When Alice's jealous husband, informed by Bardolfo and Pistola of Sir Falstaff's plan, barges in to catch his wife in flagranti with the alleged lover, the women hide the visiting knight in a basket of dirty laundry and have the servants dump him in the river. The husband is appeased at the sight of the dripping wet intruder. But his daughter Nanetta also has a gripe against him because he rejects her lover's suit and wants to marry her off to a wealthy doctor. Alice promises to right all of the wrongs committed by the silly men.
Brian Major as Ford sang with a clear and ringing voice, but lacked the comic chops to convey the ridiculousness of a middle-aged husband's jealousy. Mezzo-soprano Catherine Martin showed her talent for theatrical intrigue in the role of gossipy Mistress Quickly. She was especially effective pretending obsequiousness to Sir Falstaff ("Reverenza, reverenza...") Allegra de Vita was a vocally attractive Meg Page. Rachel Blaustein and Yi Li's were well matched as Nannetta and Fenton. Both had sweet and light voices, suitable for a young couple.
The last act offers a unique opportunity for stage directors to unleash their artistic creativity. Most of it is set in a dark forest with spirits, elves, goblins and fairies, all of them fake, roaming around in Halloween-style garb, and scaring the gullible victims. It is surprising how much of that fanciful chaos was conveyed with so little on the Strathmore stage. The characters put on their disguise in front of the audience, while the bluish light projected to the scrims behind the orchestra created a required spooky atmosphere.
Ford is tricked to approve the marriage of his daughter with the man she loves, and Sir Falstaff is frightened by fake spirits to confess his sins. Even vanquished and ridiculed in the end, the old man accepts his punishment with a philosophical look on life: "Tutto nel mondo è burla" (everything in the world is a joke). Requests and offers of forgiveness are exchanged and the party leaves the forest for a celebration at the Fords' place.
Despite its funny moments, Falstaff is not a comic opera in a traditional sense. The gross knight is a thief and a liar, but he is also an astute critic of his society. "Un mondo ladro," he wails when he is punished for his own unsuccessful attempt at crookery. He suggests that as a young man he may have been naive and decent, but has become a cynic who questions the value of honor: "can it fill your belly? can it fix a broken leg?" For those unfamiliar with Shakespeare's opus: Sir John Falstaff was a sharp-witted friend of young Prince Hal in Henry IV, part one and two, who was abandoned when the prince became King Henry V.
While we can laugh at some of the slapsticks depending on the production, there is a lot of serious thought behind the comic verse. The title character is a dishonest buffoon, but he is not truly evil. He gives hints that he was once a gentleman, and a philosopher, but fell through the cracks either through misfortune or alcoholism. In Act III, Sir Falstaff once more ruminates about the evils of the world in which there is no honor left and everything is in decline. "But," he concludes, "good wine dispels the gloomy thoughts of discouragement."
The work's treatment of women is quite advanced for Shakespeare's as well as Verdi's time. Operatic heroines are often portrayed as helpless victims or deceitful witches. In Falstaff, aka Merry Wives of Windsor, they are loyal wives, with a good sense of humor, using deception only when necessary to teach annoying men a lesson. To emphasize this modern view of women, some productions place Falstaff in more recent eras. The last one I saw live on stage at the Kennedy Center was a production by the Mariinsky Theater, with the trio of Windsor women plotting their revenge in a hair salon, while sitting under a row of retro hair driers.
The ambiguity between the comic and the serious puts Falstaff outside the categories that make an opera memorable: high drama, passion, tragedy, or side-splitting comedy. Therefore it has never had such a wide popular appeal as the traditional romantic, heroic or comic operas.
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| Rachel Blaustein as Nannetta and Yi Li as Fenton in NLDO's Falstaff |
Furthermore, Falstaff's cohesive structure does not comprise distinct separate pieces like arias and recitativi in the Italian tradition. Few people like this unique opera at first hearing, or go home humming one of its tunes, with the exception perhaps of Fenton's third-act solo Dal labbro il canto estasïato vola, which ends in a duet with Nannetta.
To fully appreciate the quality and unique delights of Verdi's last opera, a listener has to become familiar with his musical inventions and with the thoughtfulness of Boito's verse through repeated listening, something an average opera fan rarely does.
Maryland Lyric Opera was founded in 2014. Its current season of four Verdi operas ends with Otello in March.
