Submitted by alan willig, Mar 24, 2008 11:45

I attended the first night of FALSTAFF last Wednesday evening and disagree with George Loomis' comments on the production. I found it (as I had when it was new) to be thin and cheap-looking, utterly devoid of atmosphere. And the non-stop comic business for Bardolfo, Pistola, and Dr. Caius was unfunny and a distraction from the center of the drama. Zeffirelli's production at the MET may have faded somewhat, but even in 2002, it has a beauty and truthfulness that remain central, and recent revivals at the Met have eliminated the farcical barnacles that had sometimes grown over Zeffirelli's originally precise direction (yes, I attended two of those memorable 1964 performances under Bernstein and many since). What was truly worrisome about the City Opera revival (and unmentioned in Mr. Loomis' review) is that the ensemble clearly needed a lot more rehearsal time to do justice to Verdi's music--the nonet in Act One, Scene Two was simply a mess. But things improved in the second act because Jan Opalach and Ursula Ferri worked so well together in their scene in the Garter One and Stephen Powell was such a fine Ford (why is he not back at the Met?) And the performance only got better after that. On the whole, the singing was fine (though magic eluded me in Anna Skibinski's merely competent singing of Nannetta's aria and John Tessier was a pretty-toned but utterly blank Fenton )I ended the evening much more happily than I began it and went away with the wonder of FALSTAFF floating through my head--so that the performance must have been a successful one. But if either of our companies needs a new FALSTAFF production in these hard-pressed economic times, it is the City Opera.

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