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.

The Verdi Project: Otello

Verdi's penultimate opera was also the end of his 13-year retirement.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

There aren't many great Otellos so here's a lot of images of one: Anders Antonenko.
Photo © 2016 The Metropolitan Opera.

Verdi’s Otello is a colossus  of the Italian repertory, and one of the finest adaptations of Shakespeare to another medium. A triumph, it was Verdi's first opera in 13 years, and announced his final great creative partnership with librettist Arrigo Boito.

The Bernstein Legacy VI: Mahler's Sixth Symphony

Yes, this is "the one with the hammer."
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Cover art by Erte for the Mahler 6th © 1987 Deutsche Grammophon. Photo of Daniel Druckman by Chris Lee © 2016
The New York Philharmonic. Detail from cartoon of Gustav Mahler © 1910.

When Gustav Mahler started work on his Sixth Symphony, in 1904,life was going pretty well. He had married Alma Schindler, 19 years his junior and one of the most desirable brides in Vienna. They had had two beautiful daughters. Winters were spent leading the Vienna Hofoper, summers composing by the side of a mountain lake. Things were great, but this idyll would not last.

The Bernstein Legacy V: Mahler's Fifth Symphony

A journey from darkness to light

.by Paul J. Pelkonen

A triptych: Alma and Gustav Mahler  (left and right, the original is one photograph.) Center: the album art by Erte,
© 1987 Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft/UMG

With the Symphony no. 5, Gustav Mahler forged his way into uncharted territory, writing a five-movement symphony on an heroic scale. The Fifth was also pure music: Mahler's first work not to be based on previous songs, although like his earlier works, it does make use of quotations from other composers. This recording also introduced the third orchestra to Leonard Bernstein's recording project: the Vienna Philharmonic. (This live recording, made in the Musikverein on September 8, 1987 at the start of the Vienna fall season was actually Bernstein's second with the Vienna Philharmonic: a concert from 1975 is available on home video but for some reason, not on CD or LP.)