Despite my love of Verdi, I had never really gotten to know his final opera, Falstaff.  The day before the performance, I had an impromptu conversation with New York City Opera dramaturg, Cori Ellison, about the events in Verdi's life surrounding his final composition.  I learned that Verdi was eighty years old when the opera premiered; he collaborated via mail with librettist (and composer in his own right -- see his opera Mefistofele) Arrigo Boito, from his home in Sant'Agata, Italy.  People criticized his supposed inability to write a comic opera because his first and only other attempt, his early Un Giorno di Regno, was a rather large flop.  Story has it Verdi himself was sitting in the orchestra pit on the night of the premiere performance of Un Giorno, and he heard the audience's negative reaction.  (Yikes!)  To save himself any further embarrassment (at eighty, no less), his writing of Falstaff was a confidential matter.  The opera went on to be a solid success, proving that the master of the tragic opera could, in fact, lighten up.

 

I was very excited to get to know Verdi's light side.  I always love seizing the opportunity to experience with a fresh palate something others have revered since long before me.  Such was the case last Thursday night.  I brought my dear friend Adam, a vocal performance major at New School's Mannes College of Music.  He was already familiar with the opera, and he was just as excited as I was.  I knew that was a good sign. 

 

The cast was, across the board, a line-up of fully-realized characters, whacky, zany, and delightful.  Jan Opalach began singing opera to play this role, or so it would seem from the panache he exuded as he relished John Falstaff's élan.  Other standouts included Ursula Ferri as Mistress Quickly, a performance so crystal clear and hilarious, I forgot that she was singing -- and in Italian.  Adam was particularly impressed by Stephen Powell's chops as Ford and Pamela Armstrong's Alice.

 

What I liked most about the production was the set.  Simple but effective, its two main walls were visually appealing, yet neutral enough for the numerous ways they would be employed throughout the performance.  After growing accustomed to the largely interior locales of the first two acts, the set for Act Three's night scene seemed especially pleasing: a mammoth tree dimly lit center stage with the moon above.

 

The opera itself thrilled me.  It was structured in such a way that the action was constantly unfolding, often at the breakneck speed of farce.  Maybe it was the fact that Adam and I had just seen the Metropolitan Opera's Tristan und Isolde two nights prior, but we looked at each other in shock at the end of the night, both completely astounded at how quickly an entire opera had flown by.

 

Cori had one more thought on Falstaff that I have saved for the end, because it's my favorite: Verdi's farewell to his audience is anything but solemn.  The opera ends with a fugue, "Tutto nel mondo é burla," that says, "Everything on earth is a joke, everyone on earth is a fool."  I love imagining the eighty-year-old Verdi putting down his fountain pen after completing the fugue, knowing full well the final message from the master of tragedy.