Record-setting sales and donations continue to flow to Palm Beach Opera, which now entertains large audiences that include many former patrons and subscribers to theaters in the fading northern capitals. Palm Beach’s repertoire is becoming more interesting, more daring, and more heavily invested in musical talent. It rounded out its 2023-2024 season with its first-ever performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s final opera, Falstaff, the only comedy among his mature works and only the second of two comedies among his 28 operatic works.
Verdi had to be coaxed out of a second retirement to compose Falstaff, which premiered in 1893, when he was nearly 80 years old. His first retirement had followed Aida (1871). Although he composed his Requiem for the Italian nationalist writer Giuseppe Manzoni, he left operatic composition for over a decade before his music publisher coaxed him to adapt Shakespeare’s Othello for opera. For Verdi, Shakespeare was the height of dramatic theater. His early career Macbeth (1847), which he later revised, had been a hit, and he had contemplated an opera based on King Lear. Following Otello’s successful premiere in 1887, he again went to work on a Shakespearean theme, this time adapting the plot of The Merry Wives of Windsor along with scenes from Henry IV, Parts I and II.
The Merry Wives of Windsor is said to have originated from Queen Elizabeth I of England’s desire to see the fat, dissipated, martial knight Sir John Falstaff in love. As in Verdi’s opera, he is at the end of his financial rope and, heavily in debt to his insistent landlord Dr. Caius, seeks to seduce two married merchants’ wives, Alice Ford and Meg Page, whose ardor he plans to dragoon into financial assistance. In his hubris, he sends them identical letters that they then share with each other, recognizing his ruse. Falstaff’s alienated servants Bardolfo and Pistola, whom he fires in a fit of pique, decamp to Alice’s husband to warn him of Falstaff’s plot. Ford investigates by visiting Falstaff incognito and claiming to need his help in his own quest to seduce Alice. His fears appear to be confirmed when he learns that Falstaff is off to call on Alice that very day at an invitation proffered by Mistress Quickly, but the visit turns out to be a trap for Falstaff set by Alice and Meg. All the while, the Fords’ daughter Nannetta is pursued by the youthful Fenton, whom she loves but of whom Ford disapproves. In a calamitous scene set off by a furtive kiss between the young couple, Falstaff is concealed in a large laundry basket and tossed into the river Thames.
Everyone is relieved, but more torment is planned. As Falstaff recovers from his humiliating soak, Mistress Quickly returns to trick him once again. This time he must appear in disguise as a huntsman at midnight, by a famous oak tree in Windsor’s Royal Park. Approaching his next chance, he is set upon by townspeople disguised as sprites and devils, who pinch and poke him until once again all is revealed. The confusion also allows for Nannetta’s and Fenton’s covert marriage. Falstaff embraces his embarrassment, pledges his friendship to all, and then launches a great feast as a concluding fugue revels in the foolishness of the world.
In addition to being Verdi’s last work, Falstaff has also been widely considered his least characteristic composition. Much in the music had changed over the course of the composer’s long lifetime. The grander musical themes that dominated Romantic opera had given way to the shorter and more plastic leitmotifs of Richard Wagner and then to more notional passages. The famous conductor Arturo Toscanini quickly championed Falstaff as a logical development in Verdi’s style, but the opera’s 1893 premiere was far from the unqualified success of Verdi’s earlier works. Nevertheless, its memorable scenes and lively characters have allowed it to hold the stage ever since and to attract major bass-baritone talent to the title role.
Internationally, Sir Bryn Terfel and Ambrogio Maestri have dominated the role over the past two decades. Palm Beach availed itself of the superb Verdi baritone Michael Chioldi, who gave a rip-roaring performance in both music and drama. When he declares in the first scene that his distended belly is his kingdom, his voice rose with such power that the audience broke into spontaneous applause. He never flagged at any point in the evening, and his characterization was vivid and luminous.
The merry wives of Shakespeare’s title formed a fine ensemble. Amber Wagner, who had built a solid international reputation, sang Alice Ford with gleaming lyrical notes and a finely tuned edge. The young mezzo-soprano Meridien Prall was an admirable Meg Page. As Mistress Quickly, Lauren Decker gave a fine debut, descending into contralto notes both comical and serious. Tenor Anthony Ciaramitaro and soubrette soprano Andrea Carroll captured all the innocence and sweetness of the young lovers Fenton and Nannetta. Andrew Manea sang Ford’s baritonal music nobly, by turns proud and vulnerable. Eric Delagrange and Bergsvein Toverud contributed amusing antics as Falstaff’s lackeys Pistola and Bardolfo.
Antonello Allemandi remains an asset to Palm Beach opera on the podium. He led a rich, spirited performance of Verdi’s challenging score. Garnett Bruce’s direction was entertaining and vivid. His efforts were helped by the appealingly traditional sets of Wolfram Skalicki, who originally designed them for the Canadian Opera. Tudor times emerged in storybook relief thanks to the costumes of the talents of Susan Memmott Allred.
Palm Beach will stay the course in the traditionalism of its repertoire. Artistic and general director David Walker announced that the opera’s 2023-2024 season will include such favorites as Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca, Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann, and Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma. New Yorkers who have settled here may be comforted to know that the Met will produce no works of the bel canto school of opera next year even as they—in brighter sunshine, warmer temperatures, and an environment with major tax advantages—can take in Norma, a bel canto masterpiece presented by the hands of a superb company within the rise tide of artistic endeavors in Palm Beach.
