Falstaff

SCENE I

Falstaff is dreaming: he is in medieval England, enjoying a debauched evening at an inn with his protégé, Henry. The men are accompanied by a crowd of children serving a company of rogues. A cardinal and his four guards enter, bringing news that King Henry IV has died. As a result, the carefree Henry is declared King Henry V. The guards dispose of all witnesses to his previous life, but the new ruler orders Falstaff to be spared. However, he does not take him with him, for he no longer needs him. He banishes Falstaff from his splendid new life, leaving him alone and heartbroken. At that moment, Falstaff awakens from a drunken stupor and finds himself in modern-day London, where he is the owner of an exclusive nightclub.

SCENE II

The nightclub is packed with revellers. Falstaff has his eye on the beautiful, unattainable Nannetta, whom Fenton is flirting with. When Nannetta’s mother, Alice Ford, appears, Falstaff decides to seduce her and hands her a love letter. Falstaff explains his scheme to his two servants, Bardolf and Pistola. Just in case the plan fails, he has prepared other letters and orders them to deliver one to Alice’s friend, Meg Page. The servants refuse to carry out the order, claiming that honour prevents them from obeying him.

Falstaff – who is a veteran soldier and has risked his life, suffered wounds, and killed men in the past – delivers an aria about honour. In it, he bitterly declares that honour is nothing but a word with no meaning. To demonstrate the decline of this virtue in the modern world, he points to men taking part in sadomasochistic games with women working at the club. Falstaff feels that a young man being whipped by the dancers resembles his beloved Henry, who so brutally rejected him.

Mrs Quickly arrives, sent by Falstaff’s scheming friends – offended that he attempted to seduce them both at the same time, the women want to lure him into a trap. The brash messenger would gladly seduce Falstaff herself, but she holds off that pleasure for later. She arranges a secret meeting with Alice for him, to take place while her husband, Mr Ford, is away.

Mr Ford also makes an appearance, but introduces himself as Fontana, assuming the name of an artist whose painting hangs in his drawing room. Pretending to be a man hopelessly in love with Alice, he offers Falstaff money to woo his unattainable beloved. Once seduced away from her virtuous convictions, Alice may be more willing to submit to her next lover. To encourage him, Fontana shows Falstaff a photograph of Alice, who, according to his dramatic confessions, refuses to entertain his advances. Fontana’s tale of suffering sounds credible and convinces Falstaff that a splendid opportunity has arisen to seduce the woman of his choice, whilst at the same time securing a tidy sum from the hapless Fontana. Falstaff confides to his guest that he has already arranged a meeting with Alice and will be able to fulfil the request as soon as he can change into suitable clothes. A distraught Ford suddenly realises that he has been deceived by his wife and that his plan has come too late. Left alone, he sings a great aria about jealousy. It is clear that he is ready to kill his rival.

SCENE III

At the lavish house of the Fords, the friends are plotting how to humiliate the audacious suitor. The women decide to lure Falstaff into a laundry
basket, which the servants can then throw into the river. Falstaff enters and, without further ado, sets about seducing Alice. Mrs Quickly
rushes in with a warning that the furious Mr Ford is approaching with his servants. Falstaff hides in the laundry basket, as Alice’s enraged husband searches for him throughout
the house. Once again, a magnificent Verdian vocal ensemble fills the air, accompanied by a chorus. Amidst this, the lovers’ duet rings out in clear notes. Hidden behind a screen, they forget the entire world. Ford hears the sound of a kiss. Convinced that he is eavesdropping on Alice and Falstaff, he listens for a while in the hope of catching them in the act. Finally, he cannot take it any longer and knocks over the screen. There, he finds only Alice with her daughter Nannetta and Fenton. Furious, Ford continues his search. Alice decides that it is time to throw the basket into the river. Everyone watches as the man they are all looking for lands in the River Thames.

SCENE IV

A soaking-wet Falstaff scurries through the streets of London. He encounters a vagrant who offers him some wine and a dressing gown, and Falstaff once again imagines that his beloved Henry has returned to him from the distant past. At the club, Mrs Quickly is waiting for Falstaff and delivers an invitation to another meeting with Alice – at midnight, beneath an oak tree haunted by the ghosts of those who took their own life. Nannetta is waiting there in her wedding dress, disguised as the Queen of the Fairies.

SCENE V

Falstaff realises that this is yet another drunken dream when he sees the cardinal who had previously crowned Henry. Now the cardinal appears beneath the oak tree as a harbinger of death. Falstaff attempts to confess his sinful desires. The red spirit leaves him to a tryst with Alice, who is joined by Meg. In Falstaff’s imagination, Henry appears as a horned beast accompanied by the Queen’s dancing fairies, while Nannetta sings Falstaff a farewell lullaby. Falstaff realises that the fairies are the children who perished in his previous dream. Tormented by remorse, he sees a mournful procession of women approaching – the many women he has wronged in his life. The trial of Falstaff begins, and he is sentenced to a symbolic flogging, such as the one inflicted on the patrons of his club.

At one point, a carelessly disguised figure is revealed as Bardolf. As he comes to, Falstaff realises that his tormentors are people he knows, masquerading as ghosts and fairies. Furious with himself for having been duped, he unmasks them one by one. Seeing that trying to frighten Falstaff is not yielding the expected results, Ford puts an end to the hoax and proposes that his daughter proceed with the marriage to Dr Caius. Another couple, persuaded by Alice, arrives. It is Nannetta and Fenton. The enchantment and masquerade come to an end, but in the unsettling reality, Ford kills Falstaff. Everyone sings an extraordinary fugue about how the world is nothing but a folly and a mockery of human hopes and desires. They repeat the dying Falstaff’s final words – everyone has been fooled.

Marek Weiss