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Friday 9 January 2009

Shrewd survivor

Falstaff
WNO

Paradise Moscow
Royal Academy of Music

Terfel uses his voice almost as if he were in a verismo opera, being prepared to shout, snarl, alternate silky legato with staccato barking. The character is marvellously rounded, and one becomes aware of how sketchy every other figure in this work is — no doubt a planned effect on their creator’s part. In that way the opera ministers to Falstaff’s vanity, endorsing his view that if he were absent none of the others would exist. But of course they would, even if their lives would lose a crucial dimension of interest — though, in Ford’s case, an interest he would happily do without. Christopher Purves’s portrayal of this stricken character is the production’s other major feature: in him Otello lives on, showing that, however excruciating one bout of jealousy may be, the next won’t be any less indulged or painful. Ford’s and Falstaff’s scene together is easily the climax of the work in this production.

Not that anyone is less than interesting, though Rhys Meirion’s Fenton is a miscalculation, with the manner of a stricken bel canto tenor. The wives are fine, Anne-Marie Owens subtly underplaying her mock-deference to Falstaff; while Janice Watson is perhaps a little too self-possessed an Alice, never seeming outraged by or sufficiently contemptuous of Falstaff or fearful of Ford. Carlo Rizzi’s conducting lacks the extreme precision which alone gives this work its penetrating quality, and when he arrives at the miraculous mock-wedding music, it is to betray a prosaic and brusque streak. Verdi’s balancing act is here at its most virtuosic, and Rizzi just brushes his way through it.

The evening was a huge success with the audience, and not only because Bryn is back on stage. If I had to put my unease about Falstaff in the fewest possible words, I’d say that it affects me rather as an opera which was partly by Mozart and partly by Rossini would: both are marvellous in their very different ways, but clearly one is much more marvellous than the other.

More articles from: Michael Tanner | this section

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