Falstaff

Glyndebourne Festival Opera

Verdi’s astounding score takes on new life in Richard’s Jones’s darkly funny production of the much-performed masterpiece Falstaff. Verdi’s final opera, Falstaff is a mercurial, nimble-footed and profusely tuneful portrait of Shakespeare’s Fat Knight. The libretto combines three parts Merry Wives of Windsor to two parts Henry IV, with a sprinkling of fairy dust from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A witty farce, the opera follows Falstaff’s attempted seduction of two local ladies who then exact their wily revenge on him. In Jones’s hands, Shakespeare’s Windsor becomes a delightful half-timbered England complete with busty barmaids, Brownies and Eton schoolboys boating on the Thames.

A strongly international cast is led by the exciting British baritone Christopher Purves in the larger-than-life role of the corpulent Falstaff, whose profligate presence both outrages and inspires the leaner, meaner citizens of Windsor. His Falstaff is an unforgettable, brilliantly original creation and the triumphant production is vintage Glyndebourne. Since the 1930’s, the popular annual opera festival has flourished, residing in the grand English country house Glyndebourne near Lewes, in East Sussex.

Captured before a live audience at Glyndebourne Festival Opera in June 2009