Falstaff: Salzburg Festival

Sobre o Evento

Verdi's 'Falstaff' will be performed by internationally renowned opera singers under the baton of Zubin Mehta at the Salzburg Festival.

“I am not writing an opera buffa but portraying a type. My Falstaff is not merely the figure who appears in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, where he is simply a fool who is duped by women, but also as he appeared under the two Henrys [i. e., in both parts of Shakespeare’s Henry IV]”. This remark of Verdi’s, recorded by Italo Pizzi in his Memorie verdiane (1901), neatly encapsulates what the composer was intending in Falstaff, his last opera. He was aiming not to revive an amusing or ridiculous figure in the tradition of the old Italian opera buffa but to portray a human character in all his different facets, as one would expect from Verdi the great humanist.

Arrigo Boito, with whom Verdi had enjoyed a growing friendship since the premiere of Otello, fortunately knew exactly what kind of libretto was required in order to motivate the nearly 80‐year‐old composer to collaborate on another opera. It is thus primarily thanks to Boito that Verdi was finally able to fulfil a long‐cherished wish, namely to compose a comic opera. “Boito has written me a lyric comedy quite unlike any other”, he reported in a letter in 1890. Premiered on 9 February 1893 at La Scala in Milan, the opera contains a certain amount of conventional situation comedy but is above all a character comedy, with music that in its portrayal of the figures oscillates between inner sympathy and ironic distance. (Christian Arseni, dramaturg of the production)

Zubin Mehta, Conductor
Damiano Michieletto, Director
Paolo Fantin, Sets
Carla Teti, Costumes
Alessandro Carletti, Lighting
Christian Arseni, Dramaturgy
Walter Zeh, Chorus Master

Ambrogio Maestri, Sir John Falstaff
Fiorenza Cedolins, Mrs. Alice Ford
Massimo Cavalletti, Ford
Eleonora Buratto, Nannetta
Elisabeth Kulman, Mrs. Quickly
Stephanie Houtzeel, Mrs. Meg Page
Javier Camarena, Fenton
Luca Casalin, Dott. Cajus
Gianluca Sorrentino, Bardolfo
Davide Fersini, Pistola

Philharmonia Chor Wien
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra