SCOTTISH OPERA: FALSTAFF ****
THEATRE ROYAL, GLASGOWIN ITS almost 50-year history, Scottish Opera has never been under more pressure to mount one success after another. But with only four full-scale operas in this and immediat
ely foreseeable seasons, there’s little room for anything less.
In the current season, it has had mixed artistic fortunes. The opening two productions – Rossini’s Barber of Seville and Mozart’s Seraglio – were hardly in a class of their own, the latter failing completely to inject anything like the necessary glitter and vitality into Mozart’s Turkish opera. But things took a turn for the better last month, with a perfectly attractive and genuinely funny production of Judith Weir’s A Night at the Chinese Opera.
Scottish Opera still needed a winner to make this season more than just average, however. Could Traverse Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill’s new production of Verdi’s last opera, Falstaff, which opened on Wednesday in Glasgow, clinch it for them? Indeed it could, hitting all the right buttons in a dazzling staging that combines earthy humour and (in all but one awkward exception) a theatricality that buzzes so intensely that the three-plus hours sweep by in a flash.
That’s exactly what Verdi intended. As a finale to the Shakespearean climax of his long career – Falstaff followed the more serious-minded Otello – the 80-year-old Verdi produced in 1893 his only truly successful comic opera, and with it a musical score so provocative and so unexpectedly revolutionary, it defied those who considered the composer to have effectively retired after Aida.
Hill’s production mirrors the impetuosity of Verdi’s restless music, which has little time for the customary show-stopping caballeta. Any hint of such closed operatic forms is fleeting, and this Scottish Opera cast certainly avoids any sliver of opportunity to slow down the action.
One man steals the show – Peter Sidhom – whose portrayal of the fat, debauched and generally unsavoury Sir John Falstaff is a thrilling tour de force. It doesn’t take much to imagine him as perfect for the part, given the way he delivered the hideous dwarf Alberich in Scottish Opera’s Wagner Ring cycle a few years ago. But this is no clone of a past success; this is Sidhom reading a fresh and distinctive individuality into one of opera’s most likeable rogues.
Hill’s focus is a motley, middle-class menagerie of characters, whose ludicrous attempts to outsmart the caddish Falstaff simply amplify their pretensions. Ultimately, Falstaff will have the last laugh, despite the mishaps that greet him along the way. Verdi’s racy music, which never misses a comic turn, lays down all the clues, and Sidhom uses every one of them to his own advantage. He is vocally robust, his comic timing is inspired, and with the necessary body padding he plays an arrogant fat slob with calculated, athletic clumsiness.
Sidhom’s influence on the production is infectious. Indeed, such characterisations as his two miserable gofers – Alasdair Elliott’s snivelling Bardolfo and Giles Tomkins’s bold but sycophantic Pistola – feed completely off his charisma. So do the main female protagonists – Maria Costanza Nocentini’s freshly determined Alice, Leah-Marian Jones’s Meg and Lucy Crowe’s radiant Nannetta. Not even the obvious husky handicap of a cold in Wednesday’s opening performance dampened the worldly affection of Sally Burgess’s manipulative Mistress Quickly. It took a little time for William Dazeley’s Ford to acquire a matching presence, but when he did something of the character’s stolid arrogance took hold.
Perhaps the most gratifying aspect of this Falstaff, however, is the cohesiveness of production, design and music. Tom Piper’s greyish timeless backdrops hint only of mood, nothing specific other than the obvious symbols of the inn and the ancient oak, though it is the allusion to the latter at the start of Act Three – a forest of trunks that come crashing through the set – that is the production’s single weak moment.
It is testament to Peter Robinson’s musical direction that this fleeting score sizzles from start to finish. And what a finale: in one of Verdi’s most comprehensive ensemble numbers – in which the hitherto sporadic chorus finally gets a place in the sun – the entire cast sign off a terrific performance with enough joie de vivre to cancel out any lingering blues from earlier productions this season.
So Scottish Opera ends the session on a high note. Its next challenge is to present a new season’s plans that will inspire some consistency in artistic output. When these plans are announced next week, one significant factor will be the presence – as conductor and planner – of the company’s new musical director, Francesco Corti. How will he influence the future of Scottish Opera? More on that next week.
&149 Verdi’s Falstaff is at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow tomorrow, 21 and 24 May; then at His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, 5 and 7 June; Eden Court Inverness, 12 and 14 June; and Edinburgh Festival Theatre (18, 21, 26 and 28 June). For more details visit: w
ww.scottishopera.org.uk
The full article contains 873 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
