Four Falstaffs
by Peter Grahame Woolf

A week spent in the company of Sir John Falstaff, watching and listening to four reincarnations of the portly knight, was a week well spent. Several earlier operas based on Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor have been eclipsed by Verdi's late masterpiece. Salieri's (1799) is a concise two act Italian opera buffa which takes 2 hours to humiliate Falstaff thrice to general merriment. I have not heard either of the two complete performances on CD (Hungaroton & Chandos), but this is a piece which, whilst falling short of masterpiece status, is well worth attention and demands to be seen as well as heard.

Antonio Salieri (1750-1825) was a thoroughly competent professional composer, despite his unfortunate fictitious reputation, perpetuated by Rimsky Korsakov and Peter Shaffer. His Falstaff is frankly populist in its aim, but has quite a few special effects in the orchestration, with solos for cello and clarinet. Arnold Östmann (who was in charge of that wonderful Magic Flute directed by Ingmar Bergmann) gives an idiomatic account of Salieri's score, even though his orchestra does not have 'authentic' instruments. After a slowish start one gradually becomes involved in the considerable subtlety of the text, which is subtitled with the usual language choices.

John de Carlo from San Francisco (who had also played Verdi's Falstaff in Antwerp) gives a marvellous characterisation of this archetypal figure, who is easily inveigled to bounce back and hasten to another certain humiliation, for us to relish in anticipation and delivery. A cruel story about total denial of personal shortcomings and enduring confidence that roving sexual fancies will always be reciprocated.

This production at the little rococo theatre in Schwetzingen Palace is ideal for home viewing. The sets are simplified but fully adequate to suggest the different scenes. The costumes are muted in colour and all the emphasis is upon inventive acting, based on excellent teamwork and fine singing. It is a joy to watch and the direction for stage (Michael Hampe) and for the TV cameras is ideal; you feel that you are not missing any important dimension. The understatement of the stage picture benefits from the high quality DVD picture. In summary, it is an opera which looks good on screen (even though 4:3 format) and is far more enjoyable with vision than would be possible on CD. I recommend it warmly.

The physicality of Falstaff's fatness is stressed throughout the libretti of Defranceschi and, for Verdi, Boito. On a CD it needs to be suggested vocally and Jean-Philippe Lafont is too light-weight to achieve that for John Eliot Gardiner. The problem is epitomised in an Amazon review: - - 'A common failing of Falstaff recordings is the hole in the middle - - the larger-than-life Sir John sung by baritones several sizes too small for the role, both vocally and dramatically.' Gardiner's recording is important for its scholarly realisation of Verdi's scoring, including the specific, well differentiated colouring of instruments which were up-to-the-minute in Verdi's time, but had been discarded or 'improved upon' since then by modern instrument makers. Some moments are breath-taking from that point of view, and this Philips CD must by no means be dismissed. Indeed, reviewers quite properly praised the extraordinary transparency period instruments bring to the orchestral textures: 'chuckling woodwinds thrown into relief by the lean, athletic string sound, but the brass, too, brilliantly suggests the explosive bursts of laughter that are such an original feature of this astonishing score' (Sunday Times).

Despite its clarification of detail I found this 1998 recording at the Coliseum, Watford, the month after its staging at Baden-Baden, decidedly studio-bound. Perhaps there is a video recording of the production awaiting possible issue? There is also the difficulty, indeed impossibility, of following complex opera ensembles from the insert booklets, with fast moving action spread over many pages simultaneously. I am close to feeling that the days for CD opera must be numbered, except for historical recordings and rare operas which may not be viable commercially for staging (c.f. Opera Rara's Meyerbeer series).

So I come to the two DVDs I have of Verdi's Falstaff, between which my choice is easy. Willard White is a big man with a big voice, who wields rather sinister authority over his henchmen, but he is decidedly not fat enough (less so than one of his ladies) appearing rather as a well nourished, shady business man, stiff in his movements, and with too limited a range of gestures and insufficient vocal colouring to create a rounded portrait of this larger than life character. The production for the festival at Aix-en-Provence by the late Herbert Wernicke, who is responsible also for the sets, lighting and costumes, is frankly perverse, entirely on a drab set which negates what we are being told throughout by the very words before us and, fatally, there is no real sense of fun. This is concept production which is different for the sake of being different.

So on to a delightful memento of the 2001 Verdi centenary, a lovingly recreated production with scenery and costumes based on a historical performance of 1913. It was the centenary of Verdi's birth which was being celebrated by Toscannini, conducting Falstaff in the same little 300 seated Teatro Verdi in Busseto, Verdi's birthplace. Then, as now under Riccardo Muti, the orchestra was reduced, given in a chamber opera version which accorded with the composer's wish for the work to have been staged in Sant'Agata, a few miles from Busseto. The whole thing is sheer, tingling pleasure, the young Ambrogio Maestri giving a rounded portrait of all that the libretto and the orchestra tell us about Falstaff; the settings and costumes are colourful and appropriate. The balance allows the orchestra, conducted with Italianate flexibility and quicksilver mood changes by Muti, to appear to dictate all the visual responses of the characters picked up by the sympathetic director Ruggero Cappuccio. The snatched meetings between Juan Diego Florez and Inva Mula satisfy one's ideals of young love and her Fairy Queen's Sul fil d'un soffio etesio is just as one hoped. Too many to mention individually, but splendid teamwork and theatricality from all involved gives a real celebratory feeling, with shots of the charming auditorium to make you feel part of it all.

So, to conclude, a clear recommendation for the Salieri DVD, a real discovery, and do treat yourself to the Busseto/Muti chamber version of the Verdi to add to the classic CD recordings you may have already, under Toscannini, Karajan, Solti & Abbado (with the BPO) etc; these small scale modern productions both boast larger than life Falstaffs, mentally resilient and nimble on their feet, who will guarantee entertainment for two enjoyable and thought-provoking evenings.

© Peter Grahame Woolf 2002.

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