In review: from around the world: Vienna.(International ... Falstaff)(Opera Review)

No doubt the Garter Inn at Windsor was not a classy hostelry, but for the State Opera's new production of Verdi's Falstaff, which opened on October 19 (seen Oct. 29), Marco Arturo Marelli placed the inn underground, in the sewers, with walls of painted oil drums and, as a throne for the old rogue, a pile of old mattresses covered with a sumptuous bedspread. Performers entered via a trapdoor in the curved floor of thick boards that represented the bourgeois world of the town. At other times, the cast made use of a narrow fire escape, which made Falstaff and Ford's exit quite awkward. The Windsor scenes were depicted as above ground, and the unadorned boards were raised or lowered to suit whichever world was on view, pointing out the emptiness of the inhabitants' lives. The room in Ford's house was equipped with no more than a few stools, the necessary screen for the lovers and of course the enormous linen basket. The forest was only a few conifers on the horizon. The upper color scheme also contrasted with the swirling colors of Falstaff, his entourage and his environment. This was further echoed in Dagmar Niefind's costumes: Elizabethan splendor for Falstaff's world and staid Victorian dress for the Windsor folk--with the exception of Fenton, whose silver-gray suit and open-necked shirt symbolized the new century that followed the work's 1893 premiere. Marelli's sight gags elicited plenty of laughter; most of the stage business followed naturally from the text, but Marelli was more concerned with showing how the outsider, Falstaff, enriched the Windsor society where he found himself.

In this, he was most ably assisted by Bryn Terfel, quite simply the Falstaff of our day, with his outstanding body language--ludicrous and dignified at ...