Programme
- Verdi Falstaff, 115′
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Featuring
Tutto nel mondo è burla: “All the world’s a joke”. The final words of Verdi’s Falstaff bring down the curtain on one of the warmest and wisest comedies in all music. What better way to celebrate the Bard than with this uproarious operatic re-imagining of The Merry Wives of Windsor ? A world-class cast joins Edward Gardner to end our season in a burst of laughter and joy.
Sung in Italian with English surtitles
There will be a 20-minute interval after Act 2.
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Review by Rian Evans, Guardian:
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… “Having marshalled a first-class cast, and in dynamic form on the podium, it was Edward Gardner, in his final appearance as the orchestra’s principal guest conductor, who masterminded the occasion, sparky and sparkling from beginning to life-affirming final chord.
In the title role was Ambrogio Maestri, with girth to match his vocal might, and whose authoritative assumption of the fat knight’s persona is internationally acclaimed. Maestri, every bit as magisterial as his name, extrapolated every ounce, no, every gram, of comic possibility from the music, varying his sound from big, booming resonance to mischievous falsetto and bringing lovely variety to the colouring.
Remarkably, this was a performance with neither director nor props, but with Gardner making the action flow so naturally and with such pace as to belie that fact. The singers wore evening dress but, in the case of the men, cleverly subverted, with Lukas Jakobski’s tall Pistola and Peter van Hulle’s shorter Bardolph roughed up to make a classic partnership. The wit and humour of the Garter Inn came over well, both Falstaff’s relationship with his sidekicks and the nature of the man, with his twin obsessions for food and women, manifestly clear. Not only did Gardner get the essential comic timing of this just right – and thus the rest of the opera – but in the part of the Garter landlord, handed Falstaff the bar tab to cue another grand bit of Maestri belly-boasting.”
*****
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Review by Richard Bratby, ArtsDesk:
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“Edward Gardner gives the downbeat, and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra bursts into Verdi’s great opening guffaw. Enter stage left Graham Clark, as Dr Caius. Enter stage right Ambrogio Maestri, as Falstaff. And before a note has been sung, the audience is laughing. I know that in the post-Dumpygate era we’re not supposed to discuss a singer’s physical appearance. It’s just that everything about Maestri – his stature, his gait, his rolling eyes, his genial manner and his big rubbery smile – suggests that he was born to play the Fat Knight. He simply is Falstaff.
That being so, he’s not merely witty in himself, but the cause that wit is in others. His very presence on stage creates a glow of warmth and good humour. It made an excellent starting point for this concert performance, the final instalment in the CBSO’s Our Shakespeare season. […]
[…] And Gardner certainly knows how to assemble a cast. Corinne Winters, as Alice Ford, was a perfectly chosen foil for Maestri: all knowing smiles, flashing eyes and sassy self-confidence, with a voice as bright as it was expressive. Falstaff didn’t stand a chance. Jane Henschel found tenderness as well as a hint of steel as a Mistress Quickly who was very much one of the girls while Clark, Hulle and Lukas Jakobski (Pistola) made a suitably gangly bunch of reprobates; reedy of tone and exuberantly in character (it helped that Hulle is small enough to be physically lifted off his feet and bounced up and down by Maestri).
The darkness of Justina Gringyte’s mezzo as Meg Page was nicely chosen to set off Winters’s soprano, just as Pallesen’s tighter, harder-edged baritone made him a suitable contrast and adversary for Falstaff: a combative figure, with a menacing flash of Iago in his jealous outbursts. And gleaming through it all, Fomina’s sweet, sunlit singing as Nannetta: a luminous performance, which Furness (deputising for an indisposed Allan Clayton) matched in ardour if not sonic beauty.
They played off each other like a dream, and it would be a joy to see this lot together on stage. At times, it really felt like they were – swept along by Gardner’s brisk, fluid tempi and the all-pervading presence of Maestri: whether singing a mocking falsetto as warmly and richly as his great monologues, sitting back and drumming his fingers with a huge, satisfied smirk, or unleashing a truly volcanic surge of black, sonorous tone.” …
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Review by Mark Pullinger, BachTrack:
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… “To say that Maestri has made the title role his own is an understatement. He simply is Falstaff, inhabiting his character even without any trappings of costume. His warm baritone filled Symphony Hall with ease, from growling exclamations of “Ladri!” to falsetto impressions of his supposedly enamoured Alice. But what makes Maestri’s Falstaff incomparable is his appetite for the text; he greedily savours every word, inflecting each with distinctive flavour. He is a vocal actor nonpareil. We don’t just laugh at his Falstaff – we laugh with him. We empathise with him too. His hangdog expression and lugubrious “Mondo ladro” as Falstaff bemoans the wickedness in the world struck a chord, I suspect, in many of us. “Everything’s going downhill.” I know the feeling, pal.
Although this concert performance lacked a lot of the visual comedy – Falstaff squeezing himself snugly into a laundry basket, dressing up in his finery to woo Alice, or masquerading as Herne the Hunter – it still radiated good humour aplenty. There were precious few props, but still a sense of drama as singers – performing off-book – entered and exited each scene, although suspension of disbelief was required when Ford and his henchmen, searching for Falstaff, somehow seemed to miss Maestri cowering behind a gerbera! Maestri’s physique du rôle meant he towered over the cowering Bardolph and lifted Alice clean off the ground.
Corinne Winters, in peachy voice, offered an impish Alice, leading Windsor’s ‘Merry Wives’ in their plotting to teach Sir John a lesson or two. Deliciously phrased, Winters’ Alice is the real deal, soaring in ensemble, sighing in mock adoration at Falstaff’s clumsy courting. […]
[…] Cast apart, most of the joy came from Ed Gardner‘s assured handling of the orchestra. Verdi’s miraculous score fizzes and teems with detail and the CBSO revelled in it, from double basses scrabbling around like elephants en pointe as the disgruntled Falstaff recovers from his Thames dunking, to wispy flute fluttering skywards in the great ‘Honour’ monologue. Horns whooped their cuckold motif gloriously, gauzy strings accompanied Nannetta’s Queen of the Fairies. Sir Edward Elgar, describing his Introduction and Allegro, referred to its “devil of a fugue”. No fugue is as fiendish, though, as that which ends Falstaff and Gardner kept tight control, each cog ticking away merrily. As Maestri uttered the words “Tutti gabbàti!” (All are cheated), he pointed his finger at every one of us… and we all laughed together. “
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Review by Alexander Campbell, ClassicalSource:
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… “The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra was on ebullient and scintillating form, enjoying the changing moods and revelling in its part, Edward Gardner leading a fleet and breezy outing, relishing the raunchy, the ethereal and the deliberately overblown passages in equal measure – this was a Falstaff that passed by all too quickly!
The cast was excellent. In the title-role was Ambrogio Maestri, the leading exponent of Falstaff today. Large of frame, and with an impressive and flexible voice, he also has great stage presence and made every syllable of the text brim with meaning… and double meaning. He captured the geniality and the self-delusional aspects of the character perfectly and communicated these in a wonderfully artless way.
Equally impressive was the Ford of Nicholas Pallesen. He has a wonderful sappy baritone, with a ringing top and also much charisma. ‘È sogno o realtà’ was thrilling in its depiction of pent-up jealousy, bewilderment and emotional hurt. He was also very effective in the ensemble passages, always in the picture – and not just because of his dazzling co-respondent shoes!” …
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Review by Christopher Morley, Critics’ Circle:
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“The CBSO’s concert-season and Edward Gardner’s tenure as principal guest conductor could not have ended on a more joyous note – a scintillating performance of Verdi’s final opera, which had a packed Symphony Hall setting the rafters ringing.
This was a predominantly youthful cast, the Merry Wives themselves (Corinne Winters as Alice Ford, Justina Gringyte as Meg Page) pert and winsome, Nicholas Pallesen’s Ford a blustering, insecure paterfamilias, and Sofia Fomina and Sam Furness enchanting as the young lovers Nannetta and Fenton, who cannot keep their hands off each other.
Other roles were characterfully filled in this lively semi-staging, but most engaging of all were the portrayals of the opera’s two wily schemers, Jane Henschel the resourceful Mistress Quickly delighting in her plotting, and, above all, Ambrogio Maestri as her old mucker Sir John, pompous in his self-esteem and touching in his awareness of his decline.” …
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