Falstaff - Schedule, Program & Tickets

CAST
FALSTAFF
Sergio Vitale
FORD
Bogdan Baciu
FENTON
Ibrahim Yesilay
CAJUS
Johannes Preißinger
BARDOLFO
Cornel Frey
PISTOLA
Torben Jürgens
ALICE
Sylvia Hamvasi
NANNETTA
Elena Sancho Pereg
QUICKLY
Renée Morloc
MEG PAGE
Kimberley Boettger-Soller
CHOR
Chor der Deutschen Oper am Rhein
ORCHESTER
Duisburger Philharmoniker

Sir John Falstaff is a man of pleasure, especially in Verdi’s opera that was based on Shakespeare’s comedy ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’. Falstaff loves wine, good food and the ladies - provided they have rich husbands. In order to get his hands on their money he sends off love letters in duplicate with identical wording. This triggers an avalanche of outrage and thirst for revenge whose ultimate consequence is that not only the ageing knight but also those worthy citizens of Windsor who have allowed jealousy to get the better of them end up richly mocked and punished.

Giuseppe Verdi’s final work for the stage is regarded as his concluding masterpiece and a brilliant summation of his comprehensive operatic oeuvre. Unrivalled in its vitality, in its tone of detachment and irony, here Verdi creates a magnificent, all-encompassing theatre of the world. Good and evil lose their power when at the end of the work the knot of intrigue dissolves into a fugue: “Tutto nel mondo è burla, l’uom è nato burlone, nel suo cervello ciurla, sempre la sua ragione” – Everything on earth is a joke and man was born a joker. Inside his brain reason is always unstable.

Subject may change.