Giuseppe Verdi

Falstaff

Sir John Falstaff is an anarchist who obeys only the reign of his own enjoyment, an egoist who feeds only his power-hunger and his own flesh, and who would prefer to raze the small-minded morals of his contemporaries like the walls of a fortress – by seducing two women at the same time. Needless to say, his plan is thwarted, but those trying to expose him also fail to emerge unruffled from the confusion they unleash around him – which only the audience can keep track of, barely. “Tutto nel mondo è burla,” but these jokes are only funny because falling into the abyss actually does pose quite a serious risk. Arrigo Boito, the librettist of “Otello”, distilled a sophisticated, ingenious libretto from Shakespeare’s original, driving Verdi to highly complex compositional heights.

Director: Calixto Bieito
Set Designer: Susanne Gschwender
Costume Designer: Anja Rabes
Dramaturgy: Bettina Auer
Lighting Designer: Michael Bauer

Premiere: January 19th 2020

A break of about 25 minutes after the second act (after about 80 minutes)

In Italian with German and English surtitles
Supported by the Foundation for the Support of the Hamburg State Opera