★★★★☆
Stop the clocks. Run for tickets. Bryn Terfel is padded up again as the fat knight Falstaff, the part he was born for. The last time he did so at this address, in 2003, he was capering in the carnival colours of Graham Vick’s vividly memorable production, mounted as the opening splash of the redeveloped Opera House. This time Verdi’s comic masterpiece comes in the smaller range of hues typically needed for Robert Carsen’s 2012 staging, directed in this second revival by Daniel Dooner.
Brown is the favourite, the colour of the panelled walls of a plush Garter Inn teeming with chandeliers and waiters. Yet the period chosen looms even larger; it’s not the era of Good Queen Bess, but the 1950s, the heart