DVD + Blu-Ray:
Verdi: Falstaff

Verdi and Boito’s last masterpiece takes the stage of Teatro Real (Madrid), in a new production by Laurent Pelly!

Out of Giuseppe Verdi’s adoration for William Shakespeare, three masterpieces were born: Macbeth, Otello and, as a musical testament, his only comedy Falstaff. But in accordance with its librettist Arrigo Boito’s wish to remove the original bourgeois farce “The Merry Wives of Windsor” out of the English mists and to warm it up to the clear Tuscan sun, Falstaff transforms Shakespeare’s morality play into an ode to life, to pleasure and to reconciliation that forgives human vices, rewards intelligence and virtue, and praises that spark of madness that gives life its flavour. Shakespeare’s most famous and subversive comic character has indeed proved to be a fertile ground for Verdi who, then eighty-years old, signed with Falstaff his most modern, most ambitious, but also wisest and ambiguous opera.

It was high time that French stage director Laurent Pelly, an eniment specialist of the buffa repertoire, tried out his talents on this whimsical music drama: a task he performs with absolute maestria, highlighting with remarkable subtlety the numerous comic devices invented by Verdi and Boito but also pondering on the equivocal morality of the argument. He is, of course, helped in this endeavour by a wonderful team of singers. At the head of the Orchestra of the Teatro Real, conductor Daniele Rustioni underlines with unusual clarity and finesse the extraordinary complexity of this “opus ultimum”.

Genre Opera
Recording location Teatro Real (Madrid)
Recording date April 2019
Duration 128 min.
Video format Color, 16:9, NTSC (DVD) / Full HD (Blu-ray)
Audio format PCM 2.0, Dolby Digital 5.1 (DVD) / DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 (Blu-ray)
TV Director Stéphane Lebard
Composer Giuseppe Verdi
Libretto Arrigo Boito
Orchestra / Band Orchestra and Chorus of Teatro Real - Madrid
Conductor Daniele Rustioni
Stage Director Laurent Pelly
Soloist Roberto De Candia (Falstaff)
Soloist Joel Prieto (Fenton)
Soloist Rebecca Evans (Alice Ford)
Soloist Simone Piazzola (Ford)
Soloist Ruth Iniesta (Nannetta)
Soloist Daniela Barcellona (Mrs Quickly)
Distribution DVD Naxos Distribution