A quick overview of Verdi’s 1893 opera about Shakespeare’s larger than life character.

Premiered

1893

Music by

Giuseppe Verdi

Libretto by

Arrigo Boito

Language

Italian

After the incredibly successful masterpiece Otello, librettist Arrigo Boito (1842-1918) and the legendary composer Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) began to discuss the possibility of collaborating once again. Boito suggested a comic opera based on the beloved drunkard, Falstaff, a character from William Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry IV.

Initially, Verdi was uninterested in the idea, but within weeks, a critical interview was published which stated that Verdi did not have the skill necessary to compose a comic opera. Angered by the slight, Verdi took this as a direct challenge and immediately agreed to compose Falstaff, his first comic opera since Un giorno di regno (1840).

With the partnership renewed, Verdi and Boito began to work secretly in 1889. Though Verdi composed the entirety of Act I in little more than a week, distractions and personal losses kept him preoccupied, postponing the completion of the project until 1892.

Publicly, Verdi insisted that he was setting the play only to amuse himself and worked diligently to keep the project a secret; but, as interest in the work spread, La Scala commissioned the premiere in 1893. With Verdi on the podium for the first performance, the work was an immediate success and has remained a staple of the operatic repertoire ever since.

Recognized as one of the only operas whose brilliant libretto is as admired as its score, Verdi was careful to play the humor against a slight strain of melancholy, coming closer to the autumnal temper of Shakespeare’s plays than any other musical treatment. A masterful challenge to any critic, Falstaff is a perfect fusion of humanist realism and light-hearted fantasy—and the perfect testament to the multi-faceted genius of Giuseppe Verdi.

Act I

Sir John Falstaff is at the Inn when Dr. Caius bursts upon the scene and loudly accuses him of robbery. Falstaff dismisses the case, and the doctor angrily departs. Falstaff finds himself alarmingly low on funds and outlines a plan to fill both his pockets and his paunch by wooing Alice Ford and Meg Page, two wealthy wives of Windsor. Having written love letters to them both, he commands his henchmen Bardolph and Pistol to deliver them, but they decline claiming they have more honor. Falstaff gives the letter to a messenger.

In a garden of Ford’s House, Alice and Meg eagerly show one another their extraordinary and identical letters. Outraged—and thoroughly amused—the women agree that the villain must be punished and respond with a request for a rendezvous and tender greetings which they send with Mistress Quickly. After the women leave, Alice and Ford’s daughter Nannetta and Ford’s employee Fenton linger for a furtive meeting of their own. Meanwhile, Bardolph and Pistol warn Ford of Falstaff’s designs on his wife and his strong-box, They offer to help teach the old miscreant a lesson. Ford decides to meet Falstaff under disguise and an assumed name.

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Adolfo Hohenstein (1854–1928), poster for the first French production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff, 1894 [Source].

Presented by Washington National Opera, host Saul Lilienstein takes you through the musical world of Verdi’s 1893 opera about Shakespeare’s larger than life character, Falstaff.

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