Falstaff

Novità
The newest addition to a crowded and distinguished DVD field for Verdi's final (greatest?) opera comes from Glyndebourne 2009. Richard Jones's production places the action in the England of the 1940s. Jones recently received brickbats for a severely updated Munich LOHENGRIN (Decca), in which Lohengrin wears a T-shirt and track pants. The temporal facelift given FALSTAFF is inoffensive, although it fails one test: the update leads nowhere that justifies it, so it seems novelty for its own sake. Say what you will about Robert Carsen's Salzburg ROSENKAVALIER (recently reissued by Arthaus; see review), but Carsen followed through on his impulse. There proved to be a rationale for his transplanting the opera to the Vienna of just prior to WW1, and his production could not have worked in the Vienna of another period, whether the 1740s (as prescribed by Strauss and von Hofmannsthal) or the 2000s. Jones's FALSTAFF is a more arbitrary affair. The Blitz does not begin in the Windsor Park scene,...





Click to Editorial Reviews