MORE VERDI

Following up Wednesday evening's hearing of the Verdi Requiem, Saturday we went next door to see the Metropolitan Opera's production of Verdi's last opera, Falstaff, which I had never seen before. It featured my favorite current baritone, Bryn Terfel, in the title role. I heard him in an excellent recital at Tanglewood last year and I was looking to seeing him on stage. I was not disappointed.

Falstaff was Giuseppe Verdi's last opera, and his first comedy in 52 years! His librettist, Arrigo Boito, managed to extract a fairly reasonable story from Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor and King Henry IV--reasonable by opera standards, which isn't saying all that much. The aging and enormously fat Sir John Falstaff finds himself nearly broke. He decides to replenish his purse through the use of his romantic power over women--a power long gone, if it ever existed. He decides to woo Alice Ford, the wife of a rich man. Just to make sure, he decides to woo a second such woman, and that is his undoing.

He sends both of them love letters, but the two women happen to be friends, and compare notes--literally. They find Falstaff's missives to be identical, except for their names. Together with another friend, Mrs. Quickly, and Ford's daughter, they plot their revenge. It's not quite that simple. The daughter is in love with with a young man, but Mr. Ford wants to marry her off to an old doctor. And he suspects his wife of being unfaithful, so he disguises himself and sets a trap to catch her--paying Falstaff to woo her!

It takes half the opera to set all this up, and it would have been just a series of static scenes of people singing, except for the slapstick of Falstaff and his henchmen. Terfel, with Jean-Paul Fouchécourt and Mikhail Petrenko, play it for all it's worth, and manage to keep the audience laughing. Fouchécourt and Petrenko are a great comedy team--the former is at least a foot shorter than the latter.

Eventually Falstaff goes off to visit Mrs. Ford, and after a bit they are interrupted. She has him hide in a hamper of dirty laundry, which she has thrown into the Thames River, ending the second act.

The third act starts with Falstaff dragging himslf out of the water--Terfel climbs a ladder out of the orchestra pit onto the stage. The plot gets a little incredulous here, because he then falls for another trap set by the women. Briefly, he is lured out to a park, where half the town comes out in costume to torment him. It is this scene that makes the whole 3+ hour opera worth it. Verdi was a master of choral music, even greater than his small ensemble composition, if that is possible. The scene gives the Met chorus a chance to show off, not to mention its costume department. There's a big bunch of kids in the scene, who get to have a great time on stage, way past their bedtime. Oh yes, there was a horse. There are plenty of operas there where they bring a live horse out onto the stage, but I don't remember ever having seen one disguised as a unicorn. And I've certainly never seen live sheep on the stage before.

Anyhow, Falstaff learns his lesson, Ford learns his lesson (his wife is faithful), and even his daughter gets to marry her beloved. All is forgiven, and the opera ends with everyone singing that the world is but a jest.

Terfel is a very good comic, besides being a great singer. He obviously relishes being the clown--he even stayed in character a little when taking his bows. The other standout of the evening, at least vocally, was Stephanie Blythe as Mrs. Quickly. And for once a very large opera singer had a role where her size seemed appropriate. Franco Zeffirelli's 1964 sets, while certainly not his most spectacular, have been well-refurbished--and he did manage to include a couple of his signature staircases. It took a while to get going, but Falstaff was an enjoyable evening.