FROM AROUND THE WORLD: MUNICH.(Review)

The Bavarian State Opera celebrated the centenary of Giuseppe Verdi's death by devoting the last two weeks of January to that composer's late works. As productions and casts of Aida, Don Carlo and Otello were familiar, interest centered around a new mounting of Falstaff(seen Jan. 20) and two performances of the Requiem. The entire Festival was conducted by Zubin Mehta. [For a review of the Requiem in Munich, see OPERA NEWS Online for May.]

A large, raised disc at center stage was the only set that Falstaff designer Gottfried Pilz had to offer. The disc sometimes rotated, but, as Verdi's ensemble writing in Falstaff is often complicated and intricate, many of the rotations hindered musical accuracy. Windsor was nowhere to be seen. Props were likewise kept to an Elizabethan minimum; costumes were modern. As if the story were taking place in Scotland, there were lots of plaids for the women and kilts for the men, some in garish colors. Nannetta and Fenton appeared in jeans.

Verdi and Boito consciously chose to title their work a commedia lirica. Director Eike Gramss largely ignored the lyrically poetic nature of the opera, replacing it with broad humor. In a manner of speaking, the Falstaff one saw in the National-theater was Bavarian peasant theater. Gags were overdone, gestures and onstage guffaws were larger than life; subtlety was nonexistent. The composer's and librettist's affection for their "fat knight" (as well as for the rest of the characters) is evident in the many letters they exchanged during the opera's gestation period, yet Gramss never allowed any of his protagonists to become human, never allowed us to get close to anyone -- not even the young lovers.

With the exception of some clumsy management of the chorus in the final scene, this was a professional production. It was not a memorable one. There were isolated moments that tickled the funny bone: the men of Windsor using golf clubs to try to flush out Sir John in the Act II finale, or the wonderfully rednosed, hung-over Bardolfo (Anthony Mee) trying to untangle his suspenders ...