Gaie comari di Windsor

Falstaff goes courting the ladies of Windsor.
The great French baritone Victor Maurel
who created Verdi's Iago and Falstaff.

When I first heard it I remember being puzzled by Falstaff.  This wasn't the Verdi  I worshiped and adored: the Verdi of the soaring aria, the tearful father-daughter duets or the grand ensembles.  This was a Verdi of parlando, ariosi that came and went quickly, quartets that turned into duets that became octets, all with nary a pause for breath or applause.  And to my youthful ears (I was 11 or 12 at the time) it was all pretty unmelodic and didn't really sound the way opera should.  It seemed that Verdi was reverting to the style of Monteverdi or Cavalli - composers whose works I was also struggling with at the time.

Now to be fair two things - well okay three if you consider my youthful ignorance - should be taken in to consideration.  First:  Falstaff was a work that went largely unperformed in the venue I had access to at the time - the Met broadcasts and tours, and the Canadian Opera Company.  Second: The only recording I had at hand was the famous and much lauded Toscanini version.  To many this may sound like apostasy but I have grown to dislike Toscanini's Falstaff.  Yes I know he has a direct link with the work but I find his performance driven, brittle and utterly lacking in humour - much like the man himself.  I was to discover that there was more joy, wit and humanity in the piece than in almost any other opera I had ever heard.

Falstaff was a signature role for Geraint Evans - seen here in
1964 at the Met.  Falstaff bemoans the unfairness of life after
his dunking in the Thames.

Part of that realization came in 1964 when I journeyed to New York to see the first performance the Met had given in over twenty years.  It was at the old house, the production was by a young Franco Zefferelli and the cast though less than stellar had been molded into a cracker-jack ensemble by Leonard Bernstein, making his debut at the house.  Apparently I was mistaken - the old man from Busseto knew exactly what he was doing.

Performances became more frequent - even the COC did it for the first time back in 1982 with Louis Quilico; more recordings appeared led by many of the great conductors: Von Karajan, Solti, Bernstein, Guilini, Davis, Abbado and Muti.  Though none were perfect - if such a thing could exist - all were to reveal - to my ears - the autumnal as well as comedic subtleties and colour of the miraculous collaboration between Shakespeare, Boito  and Verdi.

Louis Quilico as Falstaff with the COC in 1982.

After the COC in '82 I though I was to hear many records and see several productions on TV or DVD I wasn't to see another live performance until Rome in 2010 - a production that I wrote about at the time.  Even for all its drawbacks I came out of the theatre that December evening and walked back home in the crisp early morning air - the Zefferelli scene changes added almost an hour to the performing time - feeling that all was right with the world.

After attending the COC's most recent production last Friday night I came out of the Four Seasons Centre in Toronto feeling much the same way.  What I had seen was in no way perfect but it left me feeling that despite all the troubles in the world, despite what the media was reporting, despite any personal peeves I might have at the moment, there was still much that was right with the world. 

Gerald Finley made his first appearance as Verdi's Fat Knight last Friday
evening at the opening of the COC season.  It was a more than auspicious
role debut and it is a performance that will only grow richer as time goes by.  

Hopefully by the end of the week I will have gathered my thoughts on Friday night's performance and written a bit more about it.

October 7 - 1919: KLM, the flag carrier of the Netherlands, is founded. It is the oldest airline still operating under its original name.

Mercoledi Musicale

Along the Tevere looking towards Ponte di Sant' Angelo and San Pietro.  The river seems very high but the foliage is glorious and I am homesick.

I was planning to get over to Roma this month but the best planned lays of mice and men oft go astray. A few things have got in the way and I may have to forgo the joy of seeing my friends there for a few more months. For some reason this song from On the Town seemed an appropriate way to express my disappointment.

Eileen Farrell was one of those singers who could truly manage cross-over.  Though she did appear on the stages of several American opera house - including several seasons at the Met - she was better known for her concert appearances.  Her opera repertoire roles from Gluck's Alceste to Berg's Wozzeck and in concerts she was known for her wide ranging repertoire - she could spin a fine thread of sound - her breath control was incredible - in Debussy and get down and gutsy with the blues.

The accompanist is, of course, Leonard Bernstein the composer of On the Town.  I only saw him conduct once - the 1964 Falstaff at the old Met and I can't say I am as enamoured of Bernstein as many of my generation are/were.  Unusually for him, in this video, he allows the spotlight to shine almost exclusively on Farrell.

To Walter, Robert, Linda, Gayle, Diana, Marco, Larry, Vincenzo, Anna, Peter, Joe, Mark, Carol Ann, Craig, Jolka and all my dear friends in Roma:

But let's be glad for what we've had
And what's to come.
There's so much more embracing
Still to be done, but time is racing.
Oh, well, we'll catch up
Some other time.

lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green

music by Leonard Bernstein

24 October - 1901: Annie Edson Taylor becomes the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

Mercoledi Martedi Musicale

For some reason those early morning walks earlier this week reminded me of a lovely ballad from On The Town, the Bernstein-Comden-Green love note to New York City. As I recall as he walks alone in the early morning Gabe, a sailor on leave, muses on being in a "Lonely Town." In this concert performance Thomas Hampson sings it beautifully and Michael Tilson Thomas conducts the dance sequence that follows it with a light, graceful touch.



Sadly this song was not in the film version, which used only 3 of Bernstein's numbers including the iconic New York, New York.

19 febbraio - San Corrado Confalonieri

Mercoledi Musicale

When he posted that old Pete Seeger number "Inch by Inch, Row by Row" last Friday Sling got me to thinking - a dangerous thing at the best of times. I realized how often the analogy of a garden appears in world literature and cultures. It's often equated to Paradise - sometimes a perfumed bower of roses, other times a place filled with plentiousness or sometimes just a simple plot of land. But a garden and gardening has grown to represent what is harmonious and good in life.

In his satiric novella Candide, Voltaire ends his hero's optimistic foray into the world with the recognition that the sole philosophy he and his friends can live by is to build shelter, bring warmth to the home, put daily bread on the table and cultivate the land.

When Lillian Hellman, John LaTouche and Leonard Bernstein transferred Voltaire's tale to the Broadway stage their Candide was a box office flop but the music was always highly regarded. Seventeen years later it was to become a success with a rewritten book and a revised score and has since been produced both as an operetta and a musical more than any other Bernstein piece with the possible exception of West Side Story.

Bernstein's operetta ends with Candide, his foolish love Cunegunde and their friends deciding that, like their counter parts in Voltaire's novella, they must simply "Make Our Garden Grow."

I'm afraid the one really good version that's up on YouTube has dreadful sound but here is a reasonable performance by the late Jerry Hadley (who sadly took his life last year) and Renée Flemming (before she became Rennaaay)from a Lincoln Centre performance. Things go a bit astray at the end but it still has an impact.



We’re neither pure nor wise nor good
We’ll do the best we know.
We’ll build our house and chop our wood,
And make our garden grow.
And make our garden grow.

09 luglio - Santa Veronica