Opera reviews: Verdi's Falstaff and Un Ballo In Maschera
HE WHO laughs last, laughs best – the concluding message of Falstaff sums up what is the most cheerful and warmhearted production of Verdi’s final opera I have seen. Director Bruno Ravella’s staging for Garsington Opera transfers the tale from Shakespeare’s era to the late 19th century, a time of burgeoning social aspirations.
The burghers of Windsor could have stepped from that popular Victorian classic The Diary Of A Nobody.
The campaign for Votes For Women is gathering pace, and the Merry Wives are in no doubt that Time’s Up for Sir John Falstaff’s crude way of courting.
Designer Giles Cadle’s minimal set of the Garter Inn with backdrop view of Windsor Castle includes, among Falstaff’s sparse possessions, a handsome portrait from his glory days in the army of the East India Company.
Henry Waddington’s Falstaff, now ageing, gross of paunch and in debt, pens two identical love letters to the wives of the richest businessmen of Windsor.
When Falstaff’s hangerson Bardolfo (Adrian Thompson) and Pistol (Nicholas Crawley) draw the line at playing pander, Falstaff’s smart little page Robin (Ansh Shetty) scampers off to deliver them.
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The second scene at Windsor’s busy railway station has suffragettes returning from a demonstration.
Meanwhile, furious at the fat knight’s presumption, the Wives plan their revenge. Ludicrously kitted out in tartan kilt and tam o’ shanter, Falstaff arrives at the Fords’ to lay siege to Mary Dunleavy’s pretty and witty Alice Ford.
Richard Burkhard’s manically jealous Ford, alerted to Sir John’s intentions, leads a vigilante mob to ransack his own house.
Falstaff hides in the laundry basket, which is heaved through a trap door into the river.
Waddington movingly captures Falstaff’s moment of self-realisation after his ducking in the Thames, though there is one more humiliation in store in the beautifully choreographed midnight in the forest.
Fellow conspirators partnering Mary Dunleavy’s radiant Alice Ford are Victoria Simmonds’s playful Meg Page and Yvonne Howard’s jovial Mistress Quickly.Soraya Mafi as the Fords’ daughter Nannetta and Oliver Johnston as her lover Fenton sing the love arias exquisitely.
The Philharmonia Orchestra under conductor Richard Farnes captures the snap and crackle of Verdi’s score.
The most hapless of Verdi’s heroines is Amelia in Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball). She is in love with her husband Renato’s best friend Riccardo, Governor of Boston.
When Riccardo declares his passion, she can only plead with him to protect her from herself. At this point Renato arrives to warn Riccardo of a plot against him and the friendship swiftly unravels as Renato joins the conspirators against the Governor instead.
Verdi had intended the opera to revolve around the real assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden in 1792, but the censor forbade it.
With a fictional Governor placed in a hazily visualised America, the plot becomes a conventional revenge drama. Nevertheless, the score is Verdi at his most compelling and Stephen Medcalf’s production is strongly cast.
Claire Rutter gives a performance of scorching intensity as Amelia. Baritone Roland Wood is formidable as the vengeful Renato, and tenor Vincenzo Costanzo’s Riccardo developed dramatically after a tentative start.
There was excellent playing too from the English National Opera Orchestra under conductor Gianluca Marciano.
The Theatre in the Woods’ exterior, newly clad since last year in a cross-hatching of brickwork, looks magnificent and the gardens of West Horsley Place are a country house dream.
Verdi’s FALSTAFF ★★★★★
Garsington Opera Wormsley Estate, Stokenchurch, Buckinghamshire
(Tickets: 01865 361636/ garsingtonopera.org; £110-£195)
UN BALLO IN MASCHERA ★★★✩✩
Grange Park Opera West Horsley, Surrey
(Tickets: 01962 737373/ grangeparkopera.co.uk; £100-£195)
