Verdi’s Falstaff proves he could write comic opera
Falstaff is Giuseppe’s Verdi’s last, sizzling “hurrah”; a mould-breaking “hurrah” at that. Almost eighty when he wrote it in 1893, Verdi surprisingly chose a comedy as the capstone of his triumphant career, only the second out of a repertoire of 28 works; the other being Un giorno di regno 1840.
Un giorno was not well received – understatement – and Rossini sniped that Verdi was incapable of writing comedic opera. Perhaps that got whatever passed for Verdi’s goat.
There are other departures from the maestro’s tried and tested formula in Falstaff. Gone are the stand alone arias, choruses and marches for which he had become famous, replaced by the seamless flow of melody uninterrupted by spoken dialogue he pioneered in his tragedy, Ottelo, 1887. Verdi was pointing towards the form opera would increasingly take in the coming 20th century.
He collaborated with his sparring partner and eventually close collaborator Arrigo Boito who wrote the libretto and guided him towards Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor to provide the plot. Boito was also no mean composer. His Mefistofele was performed at the Met last year – reviewed in this august organ, no less!
At the time, Falstaff received mixed reviews, throttled back, no doubt, because of Verdi’s towering reputation. After all, there was already to be a statue of the great man outside La Scala, funded in 1881.
Department of slight diversion. There is amusing contemporary correspondence between Verdi and Boito on the question of whether he, Verdi, should contribute to a statue of Bellini. He thought that risked being interpreted as vainglorious.
April 1881
“At this stage doesn’t it seem to you, dear Boito, that if I were to contribute a sum for the statue of Bellini, people might believe, or make a show of believing, that I was contributing to the one statue so that they would erect the other?” (namely, a statue of him).
After a few paragraphs of self-torture he concludes:
“Nevertheless, I am willing, indeed I authorize you, dear Boito, to tell the committee I will put my name in the list of donors, offering the amount still wanting in order to erect it, on condition, however, that mine not be erected for the present, nor shall it be erected in the future without my permission.”
I doubt if in the correspondence of today’s opera composers there is much self-effacing reference expressing diffidence over the possible erection of a statue in their honour! Verdi was already in his lifetime a publicly acknowledged and popular Titan.
The letter scotches a myth that Verdi and Boito were bitter rivals. Yes, their friendship ebbed and flowed, but from 1880 onwards they were close collaborators and, obviously from the warm terms of the letter, friends. Boito was at Verdi’s deathbed in Milan on 27th January 1901.
Back to Sir John Falstaff. I won’t reprise the well-known plot of Shakespeare’s Merry Wives. But, here is a warning preface. My occasional good friends, Messrs. Cavil and Carp, have taken a hike for this review. This Met staging – a reprise of a 2013 outing – is brilliant. Cavil and Carp are confined to their box.
The production by Robert Carsen is set in the 1950s. His reasoning is that it is a period reflecting the play’s themes of social deference questioned, pompous balloons being pricked and accepted mores questioned. It works, pace a few out of period libretto references – swords, dueling, that sort of thing.
Mr. Carsen, a Canadian, started out bumming around in unpaid jobs at the Spoleto Festival, Italy, London’s Covent Garden and Glyndebourne. He learnt his stagecraft de bas en haut – and it shows in every carefully crafted comedic, and tragic, detail of this production.
Not usually a fan of out of period settings and suspicious of director’s posturing, I was bowled over by Mr. Carsen’s production from the start. One scene in particular deserves special mention, stuffed as it is with sharp social apercus.
Ford – disguised as the mysterious Signor Fontana – calls on Falstaff and professes to being besotted by Alice Ford. Thwarted by her virtue Fontana bribes Falstaff to encourage him to breach the chastity citadel. He, Fontana, will follow over the ramparts. At least, that’s the plan – backed up by a massive bribe of wine and a satchel stuffed with unlaundered cash for Falstaff.
Mr. Carsen’s setting is the Garter Inn, got up as a London Club. We find Sir John swathed in outlandish, brown, bullet-proof plus fours (never wear brown in town), surrounded by fellow club members reading their papers, increasingly outraged at Falstaff’s escalating, noisy, breaches of club protocol. Ford (Fontana) is a “Loadsamoney” Harry Enfield spiv, got up like a rhinestone cowboy, wearing shades.
Mr. Carsen pulls off a real coup de theâtre. All the sedentary characters deliver silent “harrumphs” from behind their twitching newspapers. I’ve never seen a silent “harrumph” before. The body language is exquisite, the timing of downed newspaper, outraged glances and flouncing departures perfect. The indifference of Falstaff to the gathering melee is epic.
Falstaff was played by Ambrogio Maestri, an Italian baritone who, along with Bryn Terfel, the Welsh bass-baritone, are doppelgangers for this role. They both have a flying start in the “substantial presence” department. Let’s put it this way. The Met’s fat-suit budget was not overstretched.
Signor Maestri has a commanding voice and presence and his facial expressions spanning preening self-satisfaction, contempt, outrage, disillusion and finally, contrition told the story of his supposed triumphs and very real reversals as well as the libretto. He has made this role his own.
Alice Ford was played by Ailyn Pérez, an American soprano best known for her portrayal of Violetta in La Traviata. In the 2013 Met staging the role was taken by Angela Meade, also an American soprano, who was a hard act to follow. Ms. Pérez played it differently – a bit more the prim housewife than Ms. Meade’s blousy, bosom-thrusting Merry Wife, but her “hard to get” pertness was a convincing alternative approach to the role.
Marie Nicole-Lemieux, a Canadian coloratura contralto played the key catalyst role of fixer Mistress Quickly, and a fine job she made of it. No shortage in the bosom-thrusting department there; displaying a rich voice with sultry depths when required – which was often.
As Meg Page, was Jennifer Johnson Cano, an American mezzo and graduate of the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. She’s living proof that efforts to home-grow talent are well worthwhile and it will be no surprise if she features at the Met more regularly.
Nanetta, the Fords’ daughter – who fronts a subplot in which she is desperately attempting to avoid an arranged marriage with the frousty Dr. Caius and link up with the youthful Fenton, a barman (Francesco Demuro, Italian tenor with an engaging lyrical delivery) – was played by South African soprano, Golda Schultz.
She’s a wily, elfin presence, flitting through the rest of the action, provoking chaos, hiding under tables with her lover and eventually marrying him, besting her grumpy father, in the final scene.
In the role of Ford was Juan Jesús Rodriguez, a Spanish baritone who captured the character of the frustrated and eventually bested Ford perfectly.
The pit was occupied by Richard Farnes, the British conductor, who until 2016 was musical director of Opera North. He coped well with the complexity of the score. There is a lot of sharp contrapuntal melody as the characters all “do their own thing” in the rapidly unfolding plot. Any error from the conductor and the whole show falls apart. Maestro Farnes made no errors.
What else to delight? A horse – straight off the Central Park buggy rank, an over-rapidly cooked turkey in Mistress Ford’s kitchen, a large splash from Old Father Thames as Falstaff was defenestrated from his laundry basket. Terrific.
Then there was an item of representational degeneration – Falstaff’s filthy simmet – which grew ever more disgusting in sync with his increasingly outrageous behavior (offering to cut himself in two so that he could satisfy Meg and Alice simultaneously. There was certainly enough to go round).
Which takes us to that belly; Falstaff’s unmissable abdomen. Verdi and Boito endow it with a life of its own. It is Sir John’s greatest attribute; keeping him afloat in the Thames; sensitively rebelling when filled with water; and constantly demanding wine.
In the final scene in this staging, in Windsor Park Falstaff is on his knees and the Merry Wives sing in mock piety like a nun’s chorus, “Lord, make him chaste” with Falstaff incanting the refrain, “But save his abdomen”, “addominne”. It’s a sly pun on “Domine”. Sir John’s stomach is his God.
On to the final chorus, when Verdi truly astonishes. It is written in the novel form of a complex fugue. This is breaking new ground. Each of the onstage “factions”, Falstaff, The Merry Wives, Nanetta and her new husband Fenton, Ford, the bested Dr. Caius, the roguish Bardolfo and Pistola, now outlandishly kitted out in matching red kilts – Wow! So they were just a pair of Glasgow drunks all along – and the chorus all state their own cases in dazzling, contrapuntal melodies.
Then, the ensemble comes together in a climax to this comic yet moral play. Before the climax, the lights go up briefly, Falstaff steps forward, sweeps the audience with pointed finger, along with the rest of the cast, and reminds that he and the players, with all their foibles and failings, are but a reflection of – us. The fugue resolves into a glowing, harmonic climax.
Rossini was dead wrong. Verdi is as accomplished in comedy as he was acknowledged to be in tragedy. But what was he really up to, finishing his final opera with a one-off fugue? I think this comedy is an end of career triumph. It’s Verdi’s signpost to a future of seamless operatic music, and a nostalgic, self-effacing acknowledgement of his own musical debt to the past – to none other than Johann Sebastian Bach, 150 years before.
As all this sinks in amidst the “Bravos” there is not a dry eye in ……. well, at least seat 112 J. Giuseppe Verdi. Cala la Tela, as it says at the end of the libretto. End of the Opera.