Synopsis
- Society repeatedly equates a Falstaff encounter with an open season for lies and masquerades. The story presents us with a pretend rendezvous, a husband disguised as a spy and a collective ghost staged in a park at night. Falstaff is the individualistic outsider stirring up the comfortable status quo with his otherness and inducing the bourgeoisie to act, to produce theatre, to be anarchical.
Verdi penned FALSTAFF around the time that he was setting up his “Casa Verdi” home for retired musicians in Milan. The opera is at once a testimony to the youthfulness and experience of a composer shortly before his 80th birthday. The work deals with the ageing process and touches on issues such as loneliness and depression. Ever present, however, is the spirit of the closing fugue: “Tutto nel mondo è burla. / Everything in the world is but a joke.”
Crew
- Director: Christof Loy
- Costume Design: Ursula Renzenbrink
- Production Design: Johannes Leiacker
- Score: Donald Runnicles, Giuseppe Verdi
- Line producer: Ruth Tromboukis
