A jolly comedy opera with incredible performances and breathtaking sets
In this interpretation of Verdi’s Falstaff set in 1946, the action begins with the fat, balding Falstaff (Renato Girolami) presenting his plan to seduce two wealthy women, Alice (Anna Princeva) and Meg (Stephanie Lauricella), to pay his debts. Discovering his plan, the women along with Alice’s daughter Nannetta (Mariam Battistelli) and Mistress Quickly (Valentina Pernozzoli) resolve to teach Falstaff a lesson. Alice’s husband, Ford (Rodion Pogossov), finds out from Falstaff’s disillusioned cronies that Falstaff has designs on his wife and determines to catch them together. Meanwhile, a forbidden romance blossoms between Fenton (Filipe Manu) and Nannetta, whilst Ford has plans to marry Nannetta off to Dr Caius (Gregory Bonfatti). Thus unfolds a hilarious series of events as Falstaff falls for the women’s traps and the men are thwarted by their own tricks.
Each elaborate set is replete with depth and detail. The first scene opens out in a Tudor-style inn. After the first scene the curtain fell, and for a moment I wondered if something had gone amiss backstage. This tension soon dissipated as the curtain rolled up, revealing an entirely new set: a cabbage patch set before the French double doors of Alice’s home. This continued between each scene to put together each wildly different set, creating more excitement for each scene as we awaited every new set to be unveiled like a magic trick. In this production, the key was in the finer details: in each setting, there were puppetry cats in every scene, like an Easter egg for the audience members with the sharpest eyes. They looked up indifferently upon the chaos, adding to the absurd comedy of it all.
The action plays across five different places, and whilst all the sets were breathtaking, the high street and the park stood out. The high street was also Tudor-style, the inn sandwiched between a bridal shop and a joke shop. Above the inn was Falstaff’s room, opened up like a dollhouse! The park scenery was spectacular: an audible gasp sounded as a wizened and twisting oak as tall and wide as a real tree was revealed.
The physicality with which the cast carried the comedy was brilliant. Girolami embodies Falstaff fantastically, throwing himself into every mood swing with comic precision. Every person onstage overflows with talent, but Battistelli was a standout as Nannetta with her angelic soprano voice. The ensemble created colour and comedy, their presence felt most at the climax of each act, as when Ford led the whole town in a witch-hunt for Falstaff. They added chaos to the mix with a chain of slaps and a crowd of thumbs up directed at Ford as he tore his own house apart in his search.
I knew there was a scene in which Falstaff was stuffed into a laundry basket and thrown into the Thames, and I was wondering how they would manage to do this. The answer: expertly! The women threw open the windows of Alice’s lounge as the men carried Falstaff in a basket and tipped him out onto the window sill, where he wobbled comically before falling off-stage, throwing a massive splash of water into view.
The humour of this opera endures, and I was thoroughly amused throughout. The action was aided by the extremely detailed and thought-through sets. Championing a woman’s wit over foolish men, this opera is one that still entertains and endures over a century after it was composed. Though be warned – if you are a large, lecherous, conniving man you may be offended by some of the insults thrown at Falstaff throughout! However, the moral of this comedy opera is certainly to laugh at oneself, which we do as the cast raise a glass to the audience at the end.