The production will be available as Video-on-Demand from March 5 until April 18, 2020.
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.
Recording of the premiere on January 19, 2020
Staging: Calixto Bieito
Stage design: Susanne Gschwender
Costumes: Anja Rabes
Dramaturgy: Bettina Auer
Light: Michael Bauer
Musical director: Axel Kober
Falstaff: Ambrogio Maestri
Ford: Markus Brück
Fenton: Oleksiy Palchykov
Dr. Cajus: Jürgen Sacher
Bardolfo: Daniel Kluge
Pistola: Tigran Martirossian
Alice Ford: Maija Kovalevska
Nannetta: Elbenita Kajtazi
Mrs. Quickly: Nadezhda Karyazina
Meg Page: Ida Aldrian
Orchestra: Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg
Chorus: Chor der Hamburgischen Staatsoper
The new production of Verdi's opera is the Hamburg State Opera's contribution to the ARTE Opera Season. With the ARTE Opera Season, ARTE Concert accompanies the European opera season and presents outstanding productions from the most important opera stages in Europe.
