Falstaff

The Boston Opera Company at Back Bay Theatre

People have written comic opera and talented people have even written funny comic operas, but no one before or since Verdi has taken a full orchestra and the incredibly indiscreet apparatus of grand opera and wheedled out of them a 100 per cent foolproof light comedy. Verdi himself only did the trick once--in his last and most brillant opera, Falstaff.

The jokes in Falstaff are foolproof because Verdi built the comic timing into the music. If the singers stick to the notes, they can't help but deliver the punchline faultlessly every time. Add to this the fact that any joke, no matter how hackneyed, quadruples in laugh-value the moment it is set to music, and you see why the opera Falstaff is as much funner than the play The Merry Wives of Windsor as Gilbert and Sullivan is funnier than Gilbert.

But the secret of Falstaff's miraculous funnies doesn't end there. The phenomenon of Falstaff is that the composer, Verdi, and his librettist, Boito, changed roles. Verdi composed like a playwright and Boito wrote like a musician. Take away all the words from Falstaff and you will still know exactly what is going on. When the orchestra trills from one end to the other, you know that Falstaff has just taken a colossal chug of wine which is going to work on his insides; when the trombones blast, you know that Ford is feeling the full gamut of green-eyed emotions, even without hearing him rant about "Gelosia"; and if you are a little pedantic, when you hear the French horns bay, you will think of the cuckold's horns which the anti-Falstaffians are about to plant on Falstaff's head.

Aside from writing a tone poem, Verdi wrote brilliant accompaniment, using a lot of strings and woodwinds to give the music an uncanny gossamer, translucent sound. Verdi always leaves the range where the voices are pitched free from interference, so that the audience can hear nearly every word of the text.

Head Start

Boito's text is more like a score--attentive to rhythm, and the ability of rhythm to characterize and to conjure atmosphere. Like Shakespeare he writes word music; he has a head start, of course, writing in Italian. His verse is eminently singable. Boito also pulls together the woolly Merry Wives plot, making it compact not to mention viable.

To perform Falstaff merely requires a stageful of virtuosi, a Wagner-sized orchestra and a brilliant conductor. The Opera Company of Boston, after a triumphant tour of the nation, has brought all these requirements back to Boston. Sarah Caldwell, the Company's director, has engineered the whole thing. The massive Madame Caldwell, dressed like an acolyte at a black mass, conducts with bare fists. What is more, she conducted the opera three nights in a row, which is roughly equivalent to taking on Muhamed Ali in a match and two returns. She had absolute control over her orchestra and managed to communicate her energy to the players. Her staging of the opera was full of the traditional business but also full of pizazz and fell down only in the Windsor Oak scene, which was uninspired except for the entrance of half the chorus on stilts.

The cast is an astounding collection of pure voices attached to good actors. Heading the bill is the English baritone Peter Glossop who makes a warm graceful Falstaff and whose voices takes on the precariously high-pitched part with expansive ease. Ronald Hedlund, who plays Ford, has a wonderful, thick baritone which contrasts with Glossop's, even when the two men are singing in exactly the same range. The women too are superb with Beverly Bower and Carole Boaarde as stand-outs.

Oliver Smith's scenery has little to recommend it but ingenuity. It consists of a turntable sliced into three sets, and is exciting only when the table turns and sets change. When it is sitting still it cramps the actors. The Windsor Park set is just plain dull.

Lewis Brown, the costumer, has done a very believable job of padding out Mr. Glossop and has also had the inspiration to give the ladies 16th century profiles by flattening out their chests. It doesn't seem to hurt their singing.

This Falstaff is certainly as good, count for count, as the famous Bernstein-Zefferalli job done at the Met a few years ago. Unfortunately the Company will do it only once more, on February 23. Maybe some civic-minded group will picket for more performances.