Time for the latest installment, the last one in calendar year 2013, of the occasional mash-up of SNLC with the opera series originally begun by Demi Moaned, tied to the Metropolitan Opera's HD-casts to movie houses on selected Saturdays. Thus the variation on the standard opening statement today is:
Anyone see the Met HD-cast of Falstaff today?
Several noteworthy features mark today's HD-cast, which marks the first new stage production of Falstaff at the Met in almost 50 years, directed by Robert Carsen, a co-production with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and a replacement for the old (in many senses) Franco Zeffirelli production that held sway since 1964. (FYI, the first conductor of that production was none other than Leonard Bernstein.) But on a more sentimental level (if that's the correct word), this HD-cast marks the return of Metropolitan Opera music director James Levine to the HD-casts, after an absence of years. More below the flip....
First, so everyone can get to speed on the opera, the synopsis & cast sheet from the Met's website is here. Some reviews of the new Robert Carsen production are as follows:
(a) NYT, Anthony Tommasini (favorable)
(b) Financial Times, Martin Bernheimer (rather less favorable)
(c) New York magazine, Vulture blog, Justin Davidson (favorable)
Even if you haven't brushed up on your Shakespeare, you probably know intuitively that the character of Falstaff comes from the imagination of the Bard of Avon. Specifically, composer Giuseppe Verdi and librettist Arrigo Boito used the Falstaff mainly of Willie the Shake's The Merry Wives of Windsor, with smidgens from Henry IV, Part I, as the basis for the opera. In a nutshell, down-on-his-fortunes Sir John Falstaff (Ambrogio Maestri) tries to reverse his state of financial affairs by seducing either (or both) of two local ladies, Alice Ford (Angela Meade) and Meg Page (Jennifer Johnson Cano), starting by sending identical love letters to each lady, with just the names changed. Of course, Alice & Meg tell each other about this. With assistance from their pal Mistress Quickly (Stephanie Blythe), along with Nanetta Ford (Lisette Oropesa; FYI, the daughter in Shakespeare's Merry Wives, Anne Page, moves families in the opera, with a corresponding first name change), they resolve to get even with Falstaff (loser, he, for hatching such a hare-brained scheme).
The Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel, a leading interpreter of Verdi's Falstaff, had this succinct description of Falstaff's character, from the October 2013 issue of BBC Music Magazine, as a:
.....very troubled, fat knight who eats, drinks, steals, trash-talks and celebrates his way through life."
Sound like anyone you know? Maybe in bits and pieces, perhaps. In his review, Davidson is a bit mellower in his characterization of Shakespeare's fat knight:
"Falstaff is the cameo character as protagonist: the wisecracking sidekick, the hapless bumbler, the vainglorious poet, and hopeless lover all rolled into one and trundled into the spotlight. Verdi wrote much of his best music for deluded fools, and in Falstaff’s faults he found the distillation of his own strengths. Neither hero nor villain, he is a wry, indignant, self-serving, self-pitying, petty, and magnificent man who has always been good at laughing at others and finally learns how to smile at himself."
To be honest, given Falstaff's inability to pay his own way and icky designs on the merry wives of Windsor, I lean rather more towards villain than hero, even if he's a comic villain rather than a truly malevolent or destructive villain like Iago, the Grand Inquisitor, or the Duke of Mantua. But at least on stage, if not necessarily in real life, at least Falstaff gets some comeuppance. (I'm not so sure about Bardolfo and Pistola, resident pickpockets in the opera, getting their share of being shown up.)
As this bicentenary year of Giuseppe Verdi closes out, Falstaff is particularly notable in the Verdi opera canon, because Verdi composed only two comedies. The first was from the beginning of his career, Un giorno di regno (King for a Day), which most of you have probably never heard of, never mind heard. (In my case, the former is true, but the latter is not, as I have yet to get hold of a recording of Un giorno di regno.) In just about every other Verdi opera, the hero/heroine comes to a bad end. (This is opera, after all.) Furthermore, speaking of Shakespeare, his most recent opera was Otello, speaking of bleak, bleak, bleak tragedy. Thus to end his career with one last shot at comedy was quite a gesture by Verdi.
While it's always a risk to update operas from their original historical period to either the present day or the more recent past, IMHO, for the most part in this production, Carsen's update to the 1950's works overall. Little details visible in the HD-cast that would be impossible to see in the actual Metropolitan Opera space tell, such as copies of the Daily Telegraph and a headline in another paper that starts "OH BOY!", which I presume is an allusion to the birth of Princess Elizabeth's (later QEII, of course) son Charles. The one place where the updating might have come off as truly ridiculous would have been Act III, Scene 2, the Windsor Park scene where Alice, Meg, Quickly and company go for one last discomfiture of Falstaff, by requiring him to wear antlers on his head, in keeping with the legend of the Black Huntsman (too complicated to explain here, and probably not worth trying to make sense of it). Bernheimer obviously didn't care for it:
"Everyone sports hideous antlers in the stylised town square that masquerades, awkwardly, as Windsor Forest."
But in all honesty, in any staging, whether it's of Verdi's
Falstaff or Shakespeare's
The Merry Wives of Windsor, the whole antler thing is ridiculous in the extreme. But it's in the stage directions, so one has to like it or lump it, as there's no getting around it. I will say, however, that the way that Carsen stages Falstaff's first appearance with the antlers on head has a clever aspect to it, because he has the panels that are prevalent in the staging diagonal from front to back, so that you first see the shadow of Falstaff with the antlers on before he actually appears on stage. In addition, what Bernheimer didn't like, where everyone has the antlers, while it seems borderline whacked at first, it sort of works out in the end as the chorus members and cast move about, because the collective antlers serve as the actual forest. Think Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane in a comic context. In fact, I wonder if that might have been what Carsen was thinking, i.e. a subtle reference to another Shakespeare play, and by extension, another Verdi opera based on Shakespeare, namely the Scottish play, or course.
Another gag that Bernheimer didn't care for is the use of a live horse on stage in the 1st scene of Act II, where Bernheimer snarked about it as follows:
'The great “Mondo ladro” monologue serves as an irksome visual duet for fat knight and hungry horse (an equine distraction otherwise reduced since the Royal Opera House premiere).'
The Met audience had a laugh at seeing the horse in the stable, in that "visual duet", which actually went quite fine, IMHO. Maybe they did indeed tone it down, although from reading
George Loomis' review of the Royal Opera House staging of this production the year before, it's not clear if it was too over-the-top:
'A horse named Rupert listens to the dejected Falstaff’s monologue “Mondo ladro,” delivered in a stable, and is rewarded with handfuls of sugar.'
Perhaps the inclusion of a live horse was a nod to, or maybe swipe at, the old Zeffirelli production, and the Met audiences' general historical lapping up of Zeffirelli's hyper-realistic stagings at the house over the decade. For example, in Act II of
La boheme, the scene at Cafe Momus, Zeffirelli seemed to put all of the Latin Quarter (complete with live animals) on stage. (I will acknowledge Bernheimer on one point, though, namely that I'm not sure either why Carsen chose to have Ford's disguise as "Fontana" in Act II, Scene 1 to be as a Texas tycoon, although if anything, the disguise makes Franco Vassallo, as Ford/"Fontana", look more like Graham Greene rather than Larry Hagman).
Updating the Garter Inn to the 1950's, and also doing Act I, Scene 2, in a 1950's style restaurant actually works out quite well. Tommasini noted, for example, one clever way to work that updating into the attraction between the opera's actual romantic couple, Fenton (Paolo Fanale) and Nanetta Ford:
"In this staging, Fenton works at the inn’s dining room, dressed smartly in a waiter’s tux with white gloves. He spots the young woman he has fallen for having lunch across the room and melts, another sweet idea from Mr. Carsen."
The updated staging obviously extends to Ford's house in Act II, Scene 2, or in the Carsen staging, the largest 1950's style kitchen that you'll ever see that probably never existed in real life. (But the Met stage is sizable, so you have to fill it somehow.) A transistor radio serves as the lute that Alice would normally play, again per the original stage directions. At the start of that scene, when Nanetta is distraught at the news that her father, Ford, wants her to marry Dr. Caius, Nanetta is scarfing ice cream from what admittedly may be an anachronistic-looking container (i.e. one that looks contemporary rather than 1950's). It helps tremendously in the staging that Lisette Oropesa really does look remarkably like a teenager for someone presumably in her 20's, emphasizing the contrast in age between her "mother", Angela Meade, although in real life, AM is obviously way too young to be LO's mom. BTW, according to the intermission interview with the Met's props master, the ice cream was vegan ice cream.
The cast is generally a very good one. Of course, any production of Falstaff sinks or swims on the singer cast in the title role. Fortunately, with Italian baritone Ambrogio Maestri taking on the role of the fat knight for the 202nd time today, no worries there. (His 200th was the opening night of this production.) He's been singing the part for about 14 years, and he's just 43. It also appears that unlike just about every other Falstaff, like Bryn Terfel, Maestri doesn't need a fat suit to get into the role. His upbringing, as noted in this NYT profile by Michael Cooper from last week, prior to opening night, indicates:
"....Mr. Maestri...got his start singing at his family’s restaurant in Pavia, where he worked as a cook and a waiter when he was not singing."
In fact, the HD intermission interview by Renee Fleming with Maestri, with Maestri's wife Valeria acting as translator, showed that Maestri is also quite the chef, as did Cooper's article, which noted:
After he contributed a risotto recipe a few years ago to a cookbook called The Opera Cooks, people began asking for more. Now Mr. Maestri’s website contains not only reviews, the DVDs he appears in, and his forthcoming performances - but also a series of short cooking videos, with subtitles, that he made and posted on YouTube.
One recent recipe is for what Mr. Maestri calls “cocktail di riso” (ingredients: Carnaroli rice, shrimp, Pachino tomatoes, peas and extra virgin olive oil). The ease with which he prepares the dish on camera suggests that if Mr. Maestri had not become an opera star, he could have made a popular cooking show host."
In a bit of promo for AM's cooking skills, the Ford kitchen set was used to display a risotto dish that he cooked, probably earlier in the day, to be honest, and thus warmed up for the interview. RF asked permission to taste the dish, which AM granted via his wife, of course. RF obviously wasn't going to say in any way that the dish was subpar, but there was no sign whatsoever, even for a millisecond, that she had to pucker her lips in disapproval. It's not a stretch to imagine that RF genuinely liked the risotto, as others have, as Carsen noted at a London get-together for the production there:
'Mr. Carsen recalled giving a potluck cast party at his home in London.
“The party really only took off when Ambrogio arrived with this enormous risotto that he had cooked in this gigantic tray, with the risotto steaming hot,” he recalled. “The party started when Falstaff arrived.”'
Maestri clearly knows the role backwards and forwards and is totally comfortable in it, even if some phrasing wasn't always crisp in the heat of the moment. Understandably, he has a more forgiving take on the character, noted in translation:
"In the end, as the years go by, I see Falstaff as less and less guilty. He doesn’t deserve all this."
Well, some may differ, like me, in terms of judging artistic characters. But I certainly don't quibble with Maestri's mastery of the role. Just as a side note, while I don't claim to have seen every single HD-cast, I'm wondering if the fact that this HD intermission interview with AM was the first in the history of the Met's HD-casts to use a translator. Obviously in chit-chat with hosts like Renee Fleming, Susan Graham and Deborah Voigt, command of English on the part of the singers is necessary, particularly with many non-American singers working at the Met. But perhaps in this case, it was too important in showcasing Maestri's talents not to make use of a translator (very conveniently his wife), even if that obviously shortens the time for questions.
As mentioned, another notable aspect of this HD-cast is the return of James Levine as conductor, in his first HD-cast since the May 2011 Die Walküre, and since being out of action for 2 years due to injuries and health issues. You can catch a glimpse of the younger and healthier Levine in this video of the old Zeffirelli production, with Paul Plishka in the title role, here in the opening part, where you may note how the opera starts rather in medias res, just diving straight into the action with no overture or real set-up. (In case the embed doesn't show up, you can click here).
Levine is now pretty much working from a wheelchair, with a special podium set up for him to accommodate him having to maneuver his wheelchair to face the orchestra and stage, and the audience. Levine was already in the pit before the music started, and wheeled to face the audience at the start and after intermission. Needless to say, given Levine's stature at the Met and in NYC, the audience was very warm and appreciative, as was his reaction to them. This esteem extended to the singers at the curtain call, where several clapped for Levine individually, including AM giving Levine that quick thumb + first finger point of approval, as well as a thumbs-up. Normally, in opera, it's traditional for the lead female to walk to the wings to bring the conductor (usually male) on stage for his bow, after which he signals the orchestra to rise. With Levine obviously staying in the pit, more in the tradition of a Broadway musical perhaps, to give Levine the signal to take his bow, all 10 solo singers walked forward together to gesture towards Levine.
The Met sometimes likes to feature conductors, who don't mind, or at least put up with, answering canned questions, in the HD-casts. Levine hasn't really been featured in intermission features in past HD's that I've seen, but in this case, there was a pre-recorded interview feature with Carsen, Levine, and Met general manager Peter Gelb talking about the opera. In passing, Levine properly noted the stature of Falstaff among great comic operas, which are actually rather few when one comes to think about it. What's another rare feature about this opera is how much the female characters are in charge and call the shots, and how well they do compared to the men. Not only do Alice and Meg show up Falstaff, Alice gets to show up her husband and how foolish his unfounded jealousy is. For the most part, the men come out losers, except Fenton, who gets Nanetta in the end.
Verdi's importance in the history of opera goes without saying, as anyone familiar with opera knows. Yet I'll admit that I've never particularly been a Verdi fan, maybe because I'm more of an orchestra guy in terms of the classical music that I like. Verdi's orchestral style seems rather sparer to me than what I tend to like. In addition, one of the reputations that clings to Falstaff is that it doesn't really have big tunes, or an obvious "hit" aria like in La traviata or Rigoletto. That reputation is rather justified, IMHO, as Falstaff doesn't really have anything in the way of detachable "hit arias" or stand-alone numbers. The closest numbers that might qualify would be:
(a) Falstaff's monologue about honor and how lame it is in Act I
(b) Ford's monologue about jealousy in Act II
(c) Nanetta's number with choral backing as the Queen of the Fairies in Act III
Yet it says something about how well intergrated Verdi's score for Falstaff is that each of these numbers is fully integrated into the score and its construction, and wouldn't really work detached from the opera. Even the love duets between Nanetta and Fenton are so short, and so much a part of the score, that you can't really do them as stand-alones. This integration extends all the way to the famous final choral fugue, "Tutto nel mondo é burla", which you can see here, starting at 24:30 into the video (until it gets taken down, that is):
The text, by Boito of course, but symbolically representing Verdi's farewell to opera, goes:
"Tutto nel mondo é burla.
L'uom é nato burlone,
La fede in cor gli ciurla,
Gli ciurla la ragione.
Tutti gabbati! Irride
L'un l'altro ogni mortal.
Ma ride ben chi ride
La risata final."
A reworked Google Translation goes:
"All in the world is a jest.
Man is born a jester,
In his brain
Reason always clumps.
Everyone is fooled! Everyone mocks
Every other mortal.
But he laughs best who has
The last laugh."
Interestingly, when the final fugue momentarily stops, and Falstaff alone sings out to the audience, the line is "Tutti gabbati!" ("Everyone is fooled"), and the chorus points out at the audience when the full chorus resumes. The HD camera then pulls out to a shot of the full stage from the hall, to drive home perhaps none too subtly how we are all fools in the human comedy at some point. You can see this in the video of the old Zeffirelli production as well.
Hmm, rather fitting that this is a very outsized diary, given the central character of the story. If any of you actually stuck it out to reading this all the way through, feel free to indulge in either of the usual protocol steps in this mash-up series. You can either:
(a) chit-chat about this HD-cast, or
(b) partake of the usual SNLC protocol.
Of course, there is always option (c), i.e. both :) .