Robben_Salyers
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Total Posts: 1,082
Last Post: 5/8/2008
Member Since: 11/11/2004
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So... Are there lessons we can learn from Verdi's Falstaff? And how do these lessons fit into our world, our lifestyle of fitness...?
Falstaff
Background History of Falstaff
From the very beginning of his work on Falstaff, Verdi claimed he was merely composing for amusement, prompted by an excellent libretto handed to him by Arrigo Boito:
"Now Boito…has written me a lyric comedy quite unlike any other. I’m enjoying myself writing the music; without any plans of any sort and I don’t even know whether I’ll finish it…I repeat…I’m enjoying myself. Falstaff is a rogue who gets into every kind of mischief…but in an amusing way. He’s a type. Types are so various! The opera is entirely comic! Amen."
Verdi’s last opera, composed when he was 77 years old, was the fulfillment of a long cherished ambition – to compose a comedy. He had been challenged by the media, fellow artists, and Boito himself to the endeavor. Falstaff was in many ways Verdi’s crowning achievement – it took him to the end of a successful opera composition career while sending him to a completely new genre and composing experience.
Verdi was happily living in retirement at his farm in Sant’Agata when Boito sent him the synopsis of a proposed libretto to be called Falstaff. Verdi’s enthusiasm was aroused by the libretto which was based primarily on Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. He had finally found the comic libretto he had dreamed of all his life. Boito’s inventions enthralled and dazzled him. The nearly eighty-year-old composer became rejuvenated by the idea of Falstaff.
Still, Verdi had reservations and concerns about his advancing age, the fatigue he would necessarily encounter, and his frequent bouts of depression that had arisen after the deaths of so many of his dear friends. Boito became Verdi’s gadfly, admonishing him that being immersed in laughter and comedy would exhilarate his mind, body and spirit. "There is only one way to end our career more splendidly than with Otello, and that is to end it with Falstaff." Boito reassured him that with Falstaff , composed during his eightieth year, he would prove to his critics that he could write with great wit, and with almost Mozartean subtlety. Verdi’s confidence began to grow.
Verdi knew from experience that only a librettist with Boito’s intellectual range could transcend Shakespeare’s nuances in order to transform Merry Wives for the operatic medium. For Verdi, the essence of the comic Falstaff character was to have him emerge in rich magnificence and splendor. Only Boito, with his extraordinary fondness for work-play and irony, was capable of achieving those results. In meeting those expectations, Boito took many liberties with the Falstaff character. He adapted and synthesized his underlying story scenario from both The Merry Wives of Windsor and the Henry IV plays, extracting the poor jokes, and turning bad ones into excellent verse.
Verdi accepted Boito’s libretto almost without alteration. Verdi was enthralled with the characterization of Falstaff. Falstaff was an archetype, a lovable fat scoundrel and rogue who amusingly indulges in mischief. Boito faced the challenge of simplifying the play’s structure. He had to produce a leaner plot that contained no unnecessary characters that would clutter up the action. His basic plot contains the two major episodes from Shakespeare’s Merry Wives – the laundry basket scene and the intrigue and disguise in the forest scene. However, with much persuasion from Verdi, he charmingly develops the romantic subplot of the lovers, Nannetta and Fenton, a romance that brings the plot into the world of opera. Their world is one of stolen love that Verdi underscored with beautiful love duets, prompting Boito to describe the Nannetta-Fenton episodes as "sprinkled sugar on a tart."
In many respects, Falstaff, a fusion of three Shakespeare plays, possesses more subtlety than its models. The Merry Wives involves deception and a series of humiliations. Its farcical episodes contain threads of malice and cruelty. Verdi’s opera offers a more rambunctious and happier world in which deception and trickery seem to be relished for the sheer joy of intriguing and plotting. In the opera, no one seems to take Falstaff’s offenses very seriously. Falstaff is not so much the victim of deceit and trickery as the cause of fun, frolic and laughter.
The premiere of Falstaff took place at La Scala almost six years to the day of Otello’s premiere. Inevitably, it became an immediate and huge triumph, a national and international sensation. Verdi was delighted that it escaped being called Wagnerian, although today in the same breath as Wagner’s considerably heavier and longer comedy, Die Meistersinger. Richard Strauss declared Falstaff to be one of the greatest masterpieces of all time.
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