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Giuseppe
VERDI (1813-1901) Falstaff - opera in three acts (1893)
Falstaff - Ruggero Raimondi (bass-bar); Alice Ford - Barbara Fritolli
(sop); Ford - Manuel Lanza (bar); Meg Page - Laura Polverelli (mezzo);
Mistress Quickly - Elena Zilio (cont); Nannetta - Mariola Cantarero
(sop); Fenton - Daniil Shtoda (ten); Pistol - Luigi Roni (bass);
Bardolph - Gianluca Floris (ten); Dr. Caius - Carlo Bosi (ten) Orchestra
and Chorus of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino/Zubin Mehta rec.
live,
Teatro Communale, Florence, 12
May 2006 Stage
Director, Luca Ranconi. Set design, Margherita Palli. Costume design,
Carlo Maria Diappi Directed
for TV and Video by Paola Teoldi Sound
format, DD 5.1. DTS
5.1. LPCM stereo. Picture
format 16:9 anamorphic NTSC
Introductory essay in English, German and French
Subtitles in Italian (original language), English, German, French
and Spanish
TDK VIDEO DVWW-OPFALF [128:00]
Falstaff was
the culmination of Verdi’s long career as an opera composer. He
had talked of retirement after the premiere of Un Ballo in
Maschera in 1858 and believed that he had laid down his compositional
pen after Aida in 1871. But nearly a decade later, persuaded
by his publisher, he embarked on a rewriting of Simon Boccanegra
of 1857. This involved his working with Arrigo Boito, an accomplished
librettist and also a composer; it was an association Verdi relished.
The revised Boccanegra, unlike the 1857 original, was a
success at La Scala in 1881 and showed that even at the age of
68 Verdi’s inner genius was alive and well. Ricordi and Boito
subtly pointed Verdi towards Shakespeare’s Othello. Verdi
loved and revered Shakespeare above any other poet. Slowly, via
constant personal contact and communication, Boito produced a
libretto that sparked Verdi; even more slowly Otello was
written. It is a work of significant orchestral complexity that
marked major compositional developments, even compared to the
revised Boccanegra and the lyrical greatness within Aida
and Don Carlos, its immediate predecessors. It was
premiered, again at La Scala, six years after the revised Boccanegra.
Verdi was then 74 years of age and once again thought he had finished
operatic composition. But he had not allowed for Boito. Three
years after the premiere of Otello Verdi wrote to a friend
What can I tell you? I’ve wanted to write a comic opera for
forty years, and I’ve known’ The Merry Wives of Windsor’ for fifty
… however, the usual buts … and I don’t know if I will ever finish
it …I am enjoying myself. Boito’s vital contribution in enabling
Verdi to match Shakespeare was in his capacity for drawing out
a taut libretto from the plays concerned. He had reduced Otello
by six-sevenths and in Falstaff reduces the 23 characters
in The Merry Wives of Windsor to just ten in the opera.
The composer wrote Falstaff for his own enjoyment. Inevitably
during its composition his mind must have wandered back to the
tragic domestic circumstances of the death of his wife and children;
circumstances that surrounded the failure of his only other comic
opera, Il Giorno di Regno, at La Scala in 1840. With Falstaff,
the outcome was utterly different. Verdi’s 28th and final opera,
‘my little enjoyment’ as he called it, was all he could have hoped
for and was a triumph at its premiere at La Scala on 9 February
1893. The greatest Italian composer ever was eighty years of age.
It was a magnificent culmination to a great career.
The orchestration
in Falstaff, with its final fugue, presents challenges
to even the best of conductors with a natural feel for the Verdian
melodic line and idiom. None achieved this ‘feel’ more than Arturo
Toscanini whose presence in the orchestra of La Scala at the premiere
of Otello gave him many privileged insights, albeit his
tendency in his later years to over drive the tempi detracted
from them. But as with the famous audio recording of Falstaff
conducted by Karajan (see review)
the man on the rostrum can make or break a performance reducing
the sparkling music to a pedestrian plod. Zubin Mehta, the conductor
here, has had a chequered recording career since his great successes
with Il Trovatore (RCA) and Turandot (Decca), perhaps
getting distracted by three tenor spectaculars. However, in more
recent years as Musical Director at Munich and here at the Maggio
Musicale in Florence his touch has returned. So too has the singing
of Ruggero Raimondi as the eponymous old roué himself. I have
always liked Raimondi’s tone from his earliest recording, of La
Forza del Destino, whilst always recognising that he had to
reach for a natural bass’s lower notes. I did not enjoy his thin
tone in his portrayal of the villains in Les Contes d’Hoffmann
recorded at the Arena Macerata in August 2004 (see review).
But there, as here, his acted portrayal is outstanding with the
added advantage of better vocal health and consequent tonal cover
and colour. These skills are particularly evident in Falstaff’s
solos L’onore! L’adri! (CH. 4) and Ehi Taverniere
(CH. 25). Raimondi’s diction, vocal expression and characterisation
at these points are outstanding. Add his natural acting ability
and this portrayal can stand comparison with that of both Bryn
Terfel in the over-frenetic Covent Garden performance (BBC/ROH)
and Ambrogio Maestri at La Scala (TDK OPFAL). As Falstaff’s arch-opponent
and intended seduction, Barbara Fritolli is Mistress Ford on several
of the recordings. Her acted and sung portrayal evinces her stage
experience. Listen to her ease of vocalisation and her subtle
management of the interactions with the other wives. This is not
easy to bring off and without this element the scintillating music
of the scenes goes for nothing. As her husband, Manuel Lanza sings
adequately and is expressive in his monologue (CH. 17). Of the
other wives, Laura Polverelli is spirited in the difficult part
of Meg Page whilst Elena Zilio as Quickly lacks vocal prowess
in the lower regions of the voice. This is particularly noticeable
for those with memories of Fedora Barbieri’s portrayal with those
loaded Reverenzas. Of the young lovers, Mariola
Cantarero sings well as Nannetta and manages to float her lines
in the Windsor Forest scene (CH. 30) although her figure is a
little matronly for the part. Daniil Shtoda sings
her lover, Fenton. He has too much edge to his tone to
be ideal and his acting is wooden, his eyes far too often on the
conductor not his partner as he declares his love.
Verdi certainly saw
his creation as a comic opera, although there is more than a savage
bite in the humiliation of Falstaff. But then I suppose the same
could be said of Bartolo in Rossini’s Barber and a host
of other works of the genre. In a buffa or a comic opera somebody
has to get their come-uppance! But is Falstaff a social
comment on the relationship between the impoverished but pretentious
aristocracy coming up against the nouveau riche? This modern staging
by Luca Ronconi, with sets by Margherita Palli and costumes by
Carlo Maria Diappi, seems to suggest as much. The ladies are decked
out in floral dresses with handbags and hats to match in opulent
house and gardens. Ford is a city type with a bowler hat and carrying
a briefcase stuffed with money notes. Falstaff’s tavern is very
seedy and on a raised level requiring entrance past barrels and
via a staircase. His room is bare except for a bed. Pistol looks
every inch, particularly via the hairstyle, a punk with his red-nosed
associate being of similar ilk. A mini coup-de-théâtre comes
in the opening of the final scene. Falstaff has been put to bed
by the returning Quickly who had returned to tempt his amorous
ego once more. She covers him up as the others plot his further
discomfiture in Windsor Forest. As the scene opens, trees come
in through the window with stage and set movements bringing about
a swift, almost magical, transformation (CH. 28). Falstaff’s bed
is among the foliage and he awakes to count the chimes. The fairies
are rather punkish and only in this last scene did I feel the
designers and producer miss a trick or two. Otherwise, aided by
Raimondi’s consummate portrayal this updated production works,
not something that can be said for all such efforts.
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