Falstaff (opera)

• 1. Verdi's Late Conception

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  Giuseppe Verdi stood at the threshold of his eightieth year in 1893, having composed twenty-six operas over more than fifty years. He had written only one comedy before this moment, a work called Un giorno di regno that failed in 1840. Rossini once told him he admired Verdi greatly but believed the composer could not write a comedy. Verdi disagreed and said he longed to write another light-hearted opera, yet nobody would give him the chance. He confided his ambition to Arrigo Boito, who secretly began work on a libretto based on The Merry Wives of Windsor with additional material taken from Henry IV, parts 1 and 2.

  Boito adopted a deliberately archaic form of Italian to lead Shakespeare's farce back to its clear Tuscan source. He trimmed the plot, halved the number of characters in the play, and gave the character of Falstaff more depth by incorporating dozens of passages from Henry IV. Verdi received the draft libretto by early July 1889 and wrote back: Benissimo! Benissimo! No one could have done better than you. He still had doubts about working on a new opera at his advanced age, expressing concerns about his health and ability to complete the project. Yet as his biographer Mary Jane Phillips-Matz notes, Verdi could not hide his delight at the idea of writing another opera.

  The two men met in October or November 1891 after which the Verdis were in Genoa for the winter. They were both taken ill there, and two months of work were lost. By mid-April 1892 the scoring of the first act was complete and by June, July Verdi was considering potential singers for roles in Falstaff. For the title role he wanted Victor Maurel, the baritone who had sung Iago in Otello, but at first the singer sought contractual terms that Verdi found unacceptable. His demands were so outrageous, exorbitant, and incredible that there was nothing else to do but stop the entire project. Eventually they reached agreement and Maurel was cast.

• 2. Premiere And Initial Reception

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  The first performance of Falstaff took place at La Scala in Milan on the 9th of February 1893, nearly six years after Verdi's previous premiere. Official ticket prices were thirty times greater than usual for the opening night. Royalty, aristocracy, critics and leading figures from the arts all over Europe attended the event. The performance was a huge success under the baton of Edoardo Mascheroni; numbers were encored, and at the end the applause for Verdi and the cast lasted an hour.

  That was followed by a tumultuous welcome when the composer, his wife and Boito arrived at the Grand Hotel de Milan. Over the next two months the work was given twenty-two performances in Milan and then taken by the original company to Genoa, Rome, Venice, Trieste, Vienna and Berlin. Verdi and his wife left Milan on the 2nd of March. Ricordi encouraged the composer to go to the planned Rome performance of the 14th of April to maintain the momentum and excitement that the opera had generated.

  During these early performances Verdi made substantial changes to the score. For some of these he altered his manuscript, but for others musicologists have had to rely on the numerous full and piano scores put out by Ricordi. Further changes were made for the Paris premiere in 1894, which are also inadequately documented. Ricordi attempted to keep up with the changes, issuing new edition after new edition, but the orchestral and piano scores were often mutually contradictory. The first performances outside the Kingdom of Italy occurred in Trieste and Vienna in May 1893.

• 3. Toscanini's Revival Campaign

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  After the initial excitement, audiences quickly diminished. Operagoers were nonplussed by the absence of big traditional arias and choruses. A contemporary critic summed it up: Is this our Verdi? they asked themselves. But where is the motive; where are the broad melodies... where are the usual ensembles; the finales? By the time of Verdi's death in 1901 the work had fallen out of the international repertoire, though Gustav Mahler led a production of exceptional quality in 1904 at the Vienna Court Opera.

  The rising young conductor Arturo Toscanini was a strong advocate of the work and did much to save it from neglect. As musical director of La Scala from 1898 and the Metropolitan Opera from 1908, he programmed Falstaff from the start of his tenure. Richard Aldrich, music critic of The New York Times, wrote that Toscanini's revival ought to be marked in red letters in the record of the season. Falstaff, which was first produced here on the 4th of February 1895, has not been given since the following season, and was heard in these two seasons only half a dozen times in all.

  Toscanini returned to La Scala in 1921 and remained in charge there until 1929, presenting Falstaff in every season. He took the work to Germany and Austria in the late 1920s and the 1930s, conducting it in Vienna, Berlin and at three successive Salzburg Festivals. Among those inspired by Toscanini's performances were Herbert von Karajan and Georg Solti, who were among his répétiteurs at Salzburg. Toscanini recognized that this was the view of many, but he believed the work to be Verdi's greatest opera. I believe it will take years and years before the general public understand this masterpiece, but when they really know it they will run to hear it like they do now for Rigoletto and La traviata.

• 4. Musical Structure And Style

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  Verdi scored Falstaff for three flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, cimbasso, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings. In addition, a guitar, natural horn, and bell are heard from offstage. Unlike most of Verdi's earlier operatic scores, Falstaff is through-composed. No list of numbers is printed in the published full score.

  The score differs from much of Verdi's earlier work by having no overture: there are seven bars for the orchestra before the first voice enters. The critic Rodney Milnes comments that enjoyment shines from every bar in its irresistible forward impulse, its effortless melody, its rhythmic vitality, and sureness of dramatic pace and construction. Most of the musical expression is in the dialogue, and there is only one traditional aria. Such stylistic economy , more sophisticated, more challenging than he had employed before , is the keynote of the work.

  In McDonald's view consciously or unconsciously, Verdi was developing the idiom that would come to dominate the music of the 20th century. The lyricism is abbreviated, glanced at rather than indulged. Melodies bloom suddenly and then vanish, replaced by contrasting tempo or an unexpected phrase that introduces another character or idea. Among the solo numbers woven into the continuous score are Falstaff's honour monologue, which concludes the first scene, and his reminiscent arietta about himself as a young page.

• 5. Performance History And Conductors

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  Solti also became closely associated with Falstaff, as did Carlo Maria Giulini; they both conducted many performances of the work in mainland Europe, Britain and the US and made several recordings. Leonard Bernstein conducted the work at the Met and the Vienna State Opera, and on record. The advocacy of these and later conductors has given the work an assured place in the modern repertoire.

  Among revivals in the 1950s and later, Hepokoski singles out as particularly notable the Glyndebourne productions with Fernando Corena and later Geraint Evans in the title role. Three different stagings by Franco Zeffirelli appeared for the Holland Festival in 1956, Covent Garden in 1961 and the Metropolitan Opera in 1964. Luchino Visconti's 1966 version in Vienna stands among the most significant productions. Bryn Terfel took the part at Covent Garden in 1999 in a production by Graham Vick, conducted by Bernard Haitink.

  There are two early recordings of Falstaff's short arietta Quand'ero paggio. Pini Corsi, the original Ford, recorded it in 1904, and Maurel followed in 1907. The first recording of the complete opera was made by Italian Columbia in March and April 1932. It was conducted by Lorenzo Molajoli with the chorus and orchestra of La Scala, and a cast including Giacomo Rimini as Falstaff and Pia Tassinari as Alice.

  Some live stage performances were recorded in the 1930s, but the next studio recording was that conducted by Arturo Toscanini for the 1950 NBC radio broadcast released on disc

• 6. Recording Legacy And Interpretations

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  by RCA Victor. The first stereophonic recording was conducted by Herbert von Karajan for EMI in 1956. Among the singers whose performances of the title role are on live or studio recordings, Italians include Renato Bruson, Tito Gobbi, Rolando Panerai, Ruggero Raimondi, Mariano Stabile, Giuseppe Taddei and Giuseppe Valdengo.

  Francophone singers include Gabriel Bacquier, Jean-Philippe Lafont and José van Dam; Germans include Walter Berry, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Hans Hotter; and UK and US singers include Geraint Evans, Donald Gramm, Bryn Terfel, Leonard Warren and Willard White. The extent to which Falstaff is a Shakespearian opera has often been debated by critics, though some commentators feel that Boito and Verdi have transmuted Shakespeare's play into a wholly Italian work.