Salzburg Festival: Falstaff

Falstaff is Giuseppe Verdi’s third opera based on a Shakespeare play and the last opera he composed. Designed as a comedy of errors, it illustrates the abysses of human inadequacies. 

Christoph Marthaler, “that wondrous theatre magician” (Tiroler Tageszeitung), stages the comedy as a tongue-in-cheek Orson Welles homage, who himself impersonated and filmed “Falstaff” in 1965, and moves the action from Windsor around 1400 to a chaotic film set of the 1960s: a confusion of identities and genres. “Avantgardiste conductor and Falstaff debutant Ingo Metzmacher gave his Falstaff orchestra the ride of its life. It was mighty and infectious.” (operatoday.com) The Canadian bass-baritone Gerald Finley in the title role is convincing with his “magnificent playing marked by precise laconism” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), Russian soprano Elena Stikhinas in the role of Alice “enchants with heavenly heights” (Südwest Presse). “Creative and innovative” Kurier