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Tutto nel mondo è burla! Vienna
Staatsoper
06/21/2024 - & June 25, 27*, 30, 2024
Giuseppe Verdi: Falstaff
Luca Salsi (Sir John Falstaff), Roberta Mantegna (Alice Ford), Boris Pinkhasovich (Ford), Slavka Zámecníková (Nannetta), Hiroshi Amako (Fenton), Monika Bohinec (Mistress Quickly), Isabel Signoret (Meg Page), Andrea Giovannini (Bardolfo), Ilja Kazakov (Pistola), Norbert Ernst (Dr. Caius), Adam Dinkhauser (Robin)
Chor des Wiener Staatsoper, Martin Schebesta (chorus master), Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Thomas Guggeis (conductor)
Marco Arturo Marelli (stage director, sets & lighting), Dagmar Niefind-Marelli (costumes), Nickolaus Steitzer (dramaturgy)
L. Salsi (© Michael Pöhn)
Of Verdi’s twenty-eight operas, he wrote just two comedies. The first, Un giorno di regno (1840) was only his second foray, and was such a huge flop that it almost made him give up music altogether. It was written shortly after the death of his two children and completed after the death of his beloved wife, hardly an elixir for comedy. His second comedy, Falstaff (1893), his ultimate work, was set to a libretto by Arrigo Boito (1842‑1918), a composer in his own right and the librettist of his hugely successful opera six years prior, Otello (1887). Even more than Otello, Falstaff broke with Verdi’s style up to then, as it was a flowing drama without interruption from conventional arias and duets. This suggests Boito’s influence on Verdi’s composition, not solely as a librettist.
More cosmopolitan than his Italian contemporaries, Boito admired Wagner. At the premiere of Mefistofele at La Scala in 1868, the composer, then twenty‑six, was booed, accused of having Wagnerian influences. These accusations referred to that opera, but continued to follow him regarding Verdi’s Otello and especially Falstaff. Though some suspect he helped Verdi write the music of his two last works, he at least greatly influenced him. No listener of Rigoletto and Falstaff could deduce they were the work of the same composer.
Boito’s libretto is a masterpiece like few others in the operatic repertoire. Only Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretti for Mozart and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s for Richard Strauss are of this high calibre. Falstaff is said to be based on Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor (1602) and Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2 (1597‑99). Though the character of Falstaff appears in all three plays, the storyline is basically a compact version of Merry Wives. The role of Meg Page is shortened, her husband Master Page is eliminated, as is a third suitor of Nannetta’s, Anne Ford in the play. Passages from Henry IV were used to give depth to the character of Falstaff. Intriguingly, Boito used archaic Italian in his libretto to link Shakespeare’s play to its Tuscan sources, Giovanni Fiorentino’s Il Pecorone (1385) and Boccaccio’s Decameron (1353).
Marco Arturo Marelli’s production is a refined one of subtle comedy, and which avoids slapstick and other base vulgarities employed by too many other productions. Marelli’s understatement enhanced the opera’s inherently subtle comedic bite.
Act I opened to a tilted stage, representing the unstable state of the world. Below are Falstaff’s chambers at the Garter Inn, a messy affair with barrels for walls, an allegory of the huge quantities of beer the knight has consumed over the years. His servants Bardolfo and Pistola are dressed in faded red and yellow patchwork, reminiscent of Picasso’s Les Saltimbanques (1905) and of his Harlequin (1915), evocative of the commedia dell’arte elements of this work.
Marelli introduced a new minor character (albeit silent), a young child called Robin, a page in training. This gave gravitas to a character often portrayed with sneering ridicule, making his deep sardonic remarks about life more plausible. Falstaff employs him as an additional servant, and is likely paid by the child’s parents for his apprenticeship, but we also see Falstaff reading to the child and teaching him chess.
Dagmar Niefind-Marelli’s costumes indicated a transportation to the Victorian era, the era Falstaff was composed and premiered. The crowd, especially the men, are dressed in suits from the period’s City of London (bankers, entrepreneurs and crooks). This was no fortuitous choice. It was a glorious period for England and it was also a period of great social upheaval, the start of an era represented by Master Ford and the end of another, represented by the old impoverished knight.
Luca Salsi is a great actor, the greatest requirement for portraying Falstaff. His voice is powerful, but it is not the most velvety of present‑day Verdi baritones. Perhaps this was an added benefit, as Falstaff is more anti‑hero than conventional character. Thanks to Salsi’s interpretation, we know that Sir John takes himself very seriously. He’s deeply convinced of his own qualities, some of which may not be entirely imagined. The sense of irony in his Act I “L’onore! Ladri...!” was impressive. In this monologue, Falstaff rebukes his servants’ for their refusal to be messengers to his potential conquests, Alice and Meg. His Act II “Va! Vecchio John!”, where he celebrates his potential success with Alice, is endearing and truly funny. Marelli proved there’s no need for vulgarity when the text itself is imbued with natural comedy and the actors are of a high calibre. In contrast, his Act II arietta, “Quand’ero paggio del Duca di Norfolk” was charm personified.
Russian baritone Boris Pinkhasovich was ideally suited for the role of Ford. His high baritone contrasted with Salsi’s darker tone. An agile actor, he exuded self‑confidence and pride as Ford, and ostentatious wealth and effete manners as the lovesick Fontana (Ford in disguise) who wants the “irresistible” Falstaff to open a path for him by seducing his own wife, Alice. As he makes his financially alluring offer to Falstaff, his clandestine looks of rage were an utter delight. His quasi‑aria “E sogno o realtà?”, where he expresses his doubts about his wife’s fidelity and about his certainties in general, adroitly show a strong man at his most vulnerable.
Italian lyric soprano Roberta Mantegna oozed femininity and charm, making her a prime target for Falstaff and an obvious reason for the fits of jealousy by Master Ford. Endowed with a beautifully distinct timbre, she embodied femininity at its peak, in contrast with Slovakian light lyric soprano Slavka Zámecníková, who portrays Alice’s daughter Nannetta, nubile youth incarnate. The latter’s Act III “Sul fil d’un soffio etesio,” where, disguised as the Fairy Queen, she instructed her helpers, was ethereal. In the tradition of the Slovak coloratura sopranos of Lucia Popp and Edita Gruberova, Zámecníková enchanted as the Fairy Queen and impressed with her joie de vivre and flirtatiousness as Nannetta. Pity her Fenton is not at the same level; Japanese lyric tenor Hiroshi Amako is more an oratorio singer than a young lovesick puppy. His timbre, while pleasant, was not appropriate for the role of Fenton. Dramatically, he seemed ill at ease playing the insistent, ardent lover.
A skilled actress, Slovenian-Austrian mezzo Monika Bohinec was an effective Mistress Quickly. She definitely has the goods and could have belted the funny low notes of “Reverenza,” but she instead opted for sobriety, and was therefore subtly funny without a hint of excess or vulgarity. The other roles are not demanding vocally and were sung and acted well.
German conductor Thomas Guggeis must be the youngest conductor of a work as demanding as Falstaff to appear at one of the world’s top opera houses (he’s just 31). Despite his age, Guggeis is a skilled maestro, able to emphasize the score’s many subtleties. More than any recent performance I’ve attended, Guggeis directed the voices expertly, concluding with the opera’s delicious final fugue.
Act II’s finale, which sees Falstaff hidden in a laundry basket and thrown into the river, was well done, without buffoonery. The sets in Act III were simple but effective. Trees grow around the stage from tiny saplings to huge majestic ones. Thanks to skillful lighting, Herne’s Oak looked like a credible place where Falstaff could believe in the supernatural. Nannetta, disguised as the Fairy Queen, tied Falstaff with luminescent rope that had a magical dramatic effect.
Marelli’s 2011 production may have been less visually striking and aesthetically pleasing to a conventional viewer than the David McVicar 2016 production it replaced at the Wiener Staatsoper, but it’s truer to the work. It’s unusual to replace a production with an earlier one, but McVicar’s production was deemed “technically too costly.” This is one case where less costly is definitely not less appealing. Likewise, Luca Salsi isn’t as established as Ambrogio Maestri, but as Falstaff he offered a more subdued and subtle portrayal of the rotund knight. Truly brilliant was that, without being preachy, Marelli insinuated the social fracture of the opera. This is present in both Shakespeare’s play and in Verdi’s opera, and it’s sadly ignored by most stage directors. Society is in permanent flux, and it takes an outsider, to an extent someone at whose expense we can laugh, someone who represents bygone values, to point out the new society’s faults. Ford and the merry wives of Windsor are proper bourgeois, while Falstaff is an impoverished old knight, a fallen nobleman, a relic of a bygone era. Dr. Caius, the rich French doctor, is seen by Master Ford as a wise investment, even if it’s at the expense of his daughter Nannetta’s happiness.
At the opera’s end, thanks to Mistress Quickly’s suggested subterfuge, Master Ford unknowingly blesses the union of Dr. Caius to a disguised Bardolfo and of the impoverished Fenton to his own daughter. The bourgeois establishment, in its attempt to play a prank on an ancien régime’s vestige, makes a fool of itself. Indeed, tutto nel mondo è burla!
Ossama el Naggar
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