Opera Review: An Old Cuckold (with Horns on His Head)

Ambrogio Maestri returns as the Met's Falstaff.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Va, vecchio John: Falstaff (Ambrogio Maestri) gives a lesson in personnel management to
Bardolfo (Keith Jameson) and Pistola (Richard Bernstein) in Verdi's Falstaff.
Photo by Karen Almond © 2019 The Metropolitan Opera.

"It's not going to be my favorite Verdi opera." This, from an attendee on the 1 train riding away from Lincoln Center after the Metropolitan Opera's Wednesday night performance of Falstaff, efficiently sums up the attitude of audiences toward the composer's final opera--and his only successful attempt at writing comedy. Falstaff is a masterwork, but one held in high regard not for its considerable qualities but for its place as Verdi's last musical utterance. On Wednesday night under the baton of Robert Carnes, the opera received a performance that just might change that gentleman's opinion.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Falstaff

Shakespeare's fat knight goes a-courtin' in Windsor.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Va, vecchio Ambrogio! Ambrogio Maestri returns to the role of Falstaff at the Met.
Photo © 2018 The Metropolitan Opera.

The big fella is back. Ambrogio Maestri revives his acclaimed portrayal of Jack Falstaff in this welcome revival of the Robert Carsen  production.

The Verdi Project: Falstaff

The 87-year old composer gets the last laugh with his last opera.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Falstaff in the Laundry Basket by Johann Heinrich Füssli, painted in 1792.

(Ed. note: This is the last installment in The Verdi Project, Superconductor's deep dive into the major operas of Giuseppe Verdi. This project started with Nabucco back in February of this year and has covered fourteen (half) of the composer's twenty-eight operas. In coming weeks, Superconductor will finish The Richard Strauss Project and then figure out what composer is next.)

Sometimes the end is the beginning and sometimes the beginning is the end. In order to understand Falstaff, Giuseppe Verdi's final opera and only successful comedy, one must look back to the year 1840 when the composer than a young man had a miserable failure at La Scala with Un Giorno di Regno, his second opera. This was a forgettable comedy of mistaken identities surrounding the royal court of Poland. Today, Un Giorno di Regno is infrequently revived, usually as part of "marathon" performances of all twenty-eight Verdi operas.

Opera Review: Not the Jack You Know

Dell'Arte Opera presents Falstaff...by Antonio Salieri.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Windsor Forest in a wrestling singlet: Gary Ramsey (center) stars in Falstaff.
Photo by Brian Long © 2014 Dell'Arte Opera Ensemble.

Thanks to the 1984 Academy Award-winning film Amadeus, the composer Antonio Salieri is, to most people "the guy who killed Mozart."  Last week, the Dell'Arte Opera Ensemble, currently in the middle of a festival celebrating operatic adaptations of the work of Shakespeare, chose to mount Salieri's 1799 opera Falstaff, ossia il tre Burle ("The Three Jokes"), providing some much needed healing for this unjustly ignored composer, whose forty operas lie mostly in the locked desk drawers of history.

Opera Review: The Real Housewives of Windsor

The Met unveils Robert Carsen's Falstaff.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Hampered: Falstaff (Ambrogio Maestri, center) seeks an exit in Act II of Verdi's comedy.
Helping him are Meg Page (Jennifer Jonson Cano, l.) and Mistress Quickly (Stephanie Blythe.)
Photo by Ken Howard © 2013 The Metropolitan Opera.

Falstaff is unique. Verdi's last opera (and his lone successful comedy) arrived when the composer was 79 and still in full command of his powers. Yet despite its tunefulness, the score lacks the "big numbers" of Rigoletto, Aida and Otello, choosing to present the comedy as a complex dialogue between singers and orchestra. As a result, Falstaff, though a respected opera is considered an opera for connoisseurs, and appears only occasionally on the operatic stage.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Falstaff

Verdi has the last laugh in this new production.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Falstaff (Ambrogio Maestri) goes out on the tiles in this new
Des McAnuff production, coming to the Met on Nov. 6.
Photo by Catherine Ashmore © 2012 The Royal Opera House at Covent Garden.

For most of his long career Giuseppe Verdi was known for writing tragedies, from the family drama of his first opera Oberto to his masterpiece Otello. For his final opera and last musical utterance, he finally turned to comedy. Working with librettist Arrigo Boito (his collaborator on Otello), he created Falstaff from the Shakespeare play The Merry Wives of Windsor. 

Opera Review: The Fat Knight Rises

The Martina Arroyo Foundation presents Falstaff.

Beer blast: this would have made old Jack happy.
Sadly, Falstaff Beer went out of production in 2005.

On Friday, July 13th, famed soprano Martina Arroyo presented Verdi's Falstaff at Hunter College's Sylvia and Danny Kaye Theater, as the first of two operas in this year's Prelude to Performance series, the culmination of a series of professional-grade workshops for young singers presented by the Martina Arroyo Foundation.

Sir John has been absent from the operatic stage in New York for a few years. If one is to judge from the tumultuous reception given to Robert Kerr's nimble performance in the title role, the fat knight remains a beloved figure, the center of Verdi's last (and most unexpected) opera.

Mr. Kerr is a talented young singer, well below the age at which most baritones tackle the enormity that is Falstaff. Decked out in trad Elizabethan costume (with a mustache and beard that, wittily, resembled Verdi's own) the singer rollocked through the part, bringing weight to the three big monologues and an unexpectedly skilled falsetto when the score called for it.

He was surrounded by a strong cast. Matthew Gamble was a sonorous Ford, at his best when towering with rage in his Act II aria. Brandon Snook brought a diamond-hard character tenor to the role of Dr. Cajus. Youngchul Park showed promise as Fenton, overcoming early nerves to sing rich, lyric duets with his Nannetta (Nicole Haslett.)

Prospero vs. The Machine

News about next year's Tempest, some of it even factual.

Simon Keenlyside (left) as Prospero menaces Ian Bostridge's Caliban in The Tempest.
Image © 2004 Royal Opera House of Covent Garden

Breaking news (and we mean that literally) from the Metropolitan Opera. In an interview with Toronto.com theater critic Richard Ouzounian, Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb has confirmed something that those of us who read Bradley Wilbur's now defunct Metropolitan Opera Futures Page already knew.

Robert Lepage will return to the theater to direct the company's first production of Thomas Ades' The Tempest.

Based on the Shakespeare play, Mr. Ades' new opera will feature Simon Keenlyside as Prospero, the wizard who creates a brave new world on a mysterious island. And yes, that's the same "enchanted island" featured in the Met's new pastiche opera, brilliantly titled The Enchanted Island.

I could at this point write something absurd about Mr. Lepage's dramatic vision for mounting The Tempest. And it would look like this:

This is not the set design for The Tempest.

"Worm Stage" is Met's Latest Challenge
Production of The Tempest will require construction of Lepage's latest stage idea: the "Worm," a 200-foot-long solar-powered stage set constructed entirely from dried rotini pasta, duct tape and glue. 


The set is advertised as the first "environmentally friendly, disposable opera set" and will create a "physically challenging" acting surface for the singers, including Mr. Keenlyside.

Asked about where the actors will stand on a stage made from 40 tons of pasta, a stagehand commented "that's what the duct tape is for." He asked to not be identified.

To build the $20-million-dollar contraption, the Metropolitan Opera's dogged stage crew will have to drill a 20-foot-wide accessway in the side of the opera house. This will accomodate a 75-foot high stanchion on either side of the building. When asked how the new supports will affect the neighboring Vivian Beaumont Theater, press representative T. Musquetier said: "I'm not too worried about it." 

The above isn't true. In fact this staging is being done in collaboration with La Scala, who will mount the opera in 2013.

 In another tidbit dropped by Mr. Gelb, the company's new production of Verdi's Falstaff will be directed by Des McAnuff, the Tony Award-winning director of Jersey Boys. Mr. McAnuff is currently putting the finishing touches on his new production of Jesus Christ Superstar.

The director will be back in New York to face the music (and the audience) tomorrow. His new production of Faust, (which updates Goethe's drama to the atomic age for some reason) has its premiere tomorrow night.