The Greek National Opera will revive the highly successful production of the comic opera Falstaff for six performances at the Stavros Niarchos Hall. Performances run 15 February – 5 March.
Verdi’s swan song, based on Shakespeare’s comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor, is brought back to life in a staging by distinguished director and Artistic Director of the UK’s famous Glyndebourne Opera Festival, Stephen Langridge, which was first presented by the GNO during the 2022/23 season.
Central to the action is the washed-up old knight Sir John Falstaff, whose romantic misadventures make him a laughingstock in the provincial society of his small town. In the end, after a series of tragicomic situations have unfolded, all the work’s characters sing the following refrain together: “All the world’s a jest… but whoever laughs last, laughs best.”
Verdi surprised everyone with his final opera, Falstaff, as not many believed the then 80-year-old composer had another major work in him (and a comedy at that!) following the huge success of his Otello (1887). After his adaptation of the plays Macbeth and Othello, Verdi turned to Shakespeare one final time and picked out a comedy: The Merry Wives of Windsor. The opera has justly been called a masterpiece of the genre for its expressive economy and concise form – for its composer’s ability to encapsulate entire characters and situations with a single musical phrase.
Langridge, who was appointed Artistic Director of the UK’s renowned Glyndebourne Opera Festival in 2019, shifted the setting of Falstaff’s story to 1930s England, to a time dominated by the absurdity of a social hierarchy that bordered on feudalism. The director notes: “Our production is set in England in the 1930s. A time between the wars (Falstaff was an old soldier), with a scandalous Prince of Wales (like Hal in Henry IV) who will briefly become King Edward VIII, and a time when the hierarchies are rigid, with social class more respected than money. Falstaff is based on Shakespeare’s only fully English comedy, but the end is pure Verdi / Boito. ‘Tutto nel mondo è burla’ (All the world’s a jest) is their conclusion – and when we look around us at today’s chaotic world, we can only agree, and then perhaps head off to the pub for a pint of warm ale and a laugh with Sir John!”
