Giuseppe Verdi’s “Falstaff” is staged from November 18 to 26, 2022 with a new production by “Fondazione Teatro La Fenice“. Verdi’s last masterpiece and third of his three Shakespearean operas, Falstaff is also his only play, discarding his youthful fiasco Un Giorno di Regno. Having set to music dozens of tragedies, he was hardly a famous humorist. However, after receiving a libretto by Arrigo Boito based on one of Shakespeare’s wittiest farces, The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV, he set about adapting a subject that features the humiliation of the Elizabethan old rogue Sir John Falstaff by a bunch of silly suburban matrons. The final fugue proclaims that “everything in the world is a joke”, ending the composer’s career on the merriest, if disenchanted, notes. The opera was premiered on Feb. 9, 1893, at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan.
Cast includes: Myung-Whun Chung (conductor), Adrian Noble (director), Dick Bird (scenes), Clancy (costumes), Jean Kalman (lights), Nicola Alaimo (Sir John Falstaff), Vladimir Stoyanov (Ford), René Barbera (Fenton), Christian Collia (Dr. Cajus), Cristiano Olivieri (Bardolph), Francesco Milanese (Pistol), Selene Zanetti (Mrs. Alice Ford), Caterina Sala (Nannetta), Sara Mingardo (Mrs. Quickly), Veronica Simeoni (Mrs. Meg Page).
Website: www.teatrolafenice.it
Location: La Fenice Opera House, Venice
Schedule: November 18 – 26, 2022
