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Entranced by a heartbreakingly
magical Verdi
2005 Newsday review

by Marion Lignana Rosenberg

Sir Isaiah Berlin deemed Verdi the last of the great “naïve” composers: simple, un-self-conscious, concealed by his work. There is truth to Sir Isaiah’s claim, but it withers before the bittersweet fancy of Falstaff (1893), crafted by the 79-year-old Verdi as his farewell to the stage.

As fleet and elusive as quicksilver, Falstaff is art about art. Its protagonist is “not only witty in [himself], but the cause that wit is in other men.” Its last act reaches back to opera’s origins, as Sir John, poked and thrashed by Windsor’s merry wives, evokes Orpheus torn apart by the Bacchantes. And Verdi’s score makes learned sport of everything from his own Otello (for Master Ford’s jealous rage) to the fugues, scherzos and minuets that had been the stuff of European music for centuries.

Even the shimmer of Fenton and Nanetta’s love music is suffused with an old man’s melancholy. Like moonlight on spun sugar, it suggests fragility and evanescence, the nearness of time’s pitiless maws. As played by the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra under James Levine, it and every measure of Verdi’s magical opera shone with heartbreaking beauty.

Indeed, the Met’s Falstaff is as good as opera gets. Some of Verdi’s polymetric writing emerged askew at Friday’s premiere, but the cast’s comic timing sizzles, and Franco Zeffirelli’s rebuilt 1964 production (staged by David Kneuss) is a marvel. The interiors’ beams and rafters recall the great Globe itself. A thousand shades of sepia give way in the finale to an iridescent Windsor Forest, teeming with imps and lit with the phosphorescent glow of Verdi’s music.

In the title role, Bryn Terfel commands the stage, whether silencing his attendants with a glance or melting into indolent bliss as he warms himself with wine after his dunk in the Thames. He is a ruminative Falstaff, in yet somehow apart from the mayhem he stirs up. Sometimes sounding strained in the role’s highest reaches, Terfel purred and growled, whispered and roared, and was a masterly fat knight.

Mikhail Petrenko and Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, the mangy, sidesplitting Pistol and Bardolph, scampered with acrobatic grace and shaped Boito’s verses zestfully, as did Peter Bronder as the oily Dr. Caius. A superb comic actress with a voice of unrivaled richness, Stephanie Blythe made a formidable Dame Quickly, and Maria Zifchak was a winning Meg Page.

For Verdi, the true protagonist of Falstaff was Alice Ford, and in Patricia Racette the Met has an Alice of seductive verve, more than a match for Sir John and her ticklish spouse, powerfully sung and played by Roberto Frontali. Heidi Grant Murphy and Matthew Polenzani brought elegance to Nanetta and Fenton’s challenging music.

“Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world”; miss this Falstaff, and miss a rare chance to see and hear opera at its most inspired.

FALSTAFF. Music by Giuseppe Verdi, libretto by Arrigo Boito. The Metropolitan Opera, James Levine conducting. Through October 22 at Lincoln Center. Visit www.metopera.org or call 212-362-6000. Seen Friday.

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