Falstaff

Verdi was hapilly passing his retirement days on his estate of Sant’Agata when Boito sent him the content of the suggested libretto entitled Falstaff. The libretto which was based mostly on Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor aroused Verdi’s enthusiasm. He finally found a witty libretto he was dreaming of all his life. He was impressed and fascinated by Boito’s ideas. The idea of Falstaff made the eighty-year-old composer young again.

Falstaff is actually a combination of three Shakespeare’s works and more refined than its models. Merry Wives of Windsor include deception and a series of humiliations, while burlesque episodes have hints of cruelty and malice. Verdi’s opera offers a more unrestrained and a happier world in which deceptions and frauds are loved because of the very sense of intriguing and cheating. None of the opera characters takes Falstaff’s mischiefs seriously. Falstaff is not so much a victim of deception and schemes, but the occasion for fun, jokes and laughter. The world-premiere of Falstaff was held in La Scala almost six years after the world-premiere of Otello. It was received with standing ovations and became the national and international sensation. Richard Strauss proclaimed Falstaff one of the greatest operas of all times. Verdi’s master-piece returns on the stage of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb after full forty-five years