Giuseppe Verdi's Falstaff BACKGROUND

Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff

BACKGROUND

After the incredibly successful masterpiece Otello , librettist Arrigo Boito (1842 - 1918) and the legendary composer Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) began to discuss the possibility of collaborating once again. Boito suggested a comic opera based on the beloved drunkard, Falstaff, a character from William Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry IV . Initially, Verdi was uninterested in the idea, but within weeks, a critical interview was published which stated that Verdi did not have the skill necessary to compose a comic opera. Angered by the slight, Verdi took this as a direct challenge and immediately agreed to compose Falstaff , his first comic opera since Un giorno di regno (1840). With the partnership renewed, Verdi and Boito began to work secretly in 1889, and though Verdi composed the entirety of Act I in little more than a week, distractions and personal losses kept him preoccupied, thereby postponing the completion of the project until 1892. Publicly, Verdi insisted that he was setting the play only to amuse himself and worked diligently to keep the project a secret, but as interest in the work spread, La Scala commissioned the premiere in 1893. With Verdi on the podium for the first performance, the work was an immediate success, and has remained a staple of the operatic repertoire ever since. Recognized as one of the only operas whose brilliant libretto is as admired as its score, Verdi was careful to play the humor against a slight strain of melancholy, coming closer to the autumnal temper of Shakespeare’s plays than any other musical treatment. A masterful challenge to any critic, Falstaff is a perfect fusion of humanist realism and light-hearted fantasy—and the perfect testament to the multi-faceted genius of Giuseppe Verdi.

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