Verdi: Falstaff - Teatro Real (2019) [Blu-ray]

Out of Verdi's adoration for Shakespeare three masterpieces were born: Macbeth, Otello and, as a musical testament, his only comedy Falstaff. 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 most ambiguous opera. It was high time that French stage director Laurent Pelly, an eminent specialist of the buffa repertoire, tried out his talents on this whimsical music drama: a task he performs with absolute mastery, 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: from baritone Roberto de Candia to mezzo soprano Daniela Barcellona as Mrs Quickly, without forgetting the exceptional Simone Piazzola as Ford, Rebecca Evans as Alice, or Ruth Iniesta and Joel Prieto as Nannetta and Fenton. 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.