FROM AROUND THE WORLD: SALZBURG.(Review)

Salzburg's new Falstaff departed from the Shakespearean setting, placing the action in the early 1890s, about the time that Verdi and Boito were collaborating on the opera. Seen during April's Easter Festival, Ruggero Raimondi's elderly knight was not the usual white-haired old rogue but an opportunistic retired soldier, who shows us how Don Giovanni (one of Raimondi's celebrated roles) might have spent his declining years if he had survived Mozart's hell-fire ending. His Falstaff -- a towering, charismatic figure with an opulent bass -- dominated the stage whether he was wearing long underwear (in the first scene) or an officer's uniform that looked as if, just possibly, this Falstaff was a veteran of the war that unified Italy. Indeed, throughout the production, despite an international cast and the use of the characters' original names, there was a distinctly Italian flavor. Director Declan Donellan deliberately mixed time and place to accommodate Boito's fast-moving libretto. Thus, when Falstaff announced his plan to seduce Meg and Alice, the two women dashed through the Garter Inn to illustrate his thoughts. And when three panels moved in to shift the scene to Alice's garden, Falstaff remained seated in his armchair center stage, reading a newspaper.

Nick Ormond's basic set was a black-and-white landscape augmented by sliding panels that showed us the Garter Inn, Alice Ford's garden and, in Act II, the Fords' half-timbered living room. The forest scene revisited the landscape but added the trunk of a large oak at center stage. Ormond's costumes reflected the social divisions among the characters. Falstaff, who tried to impress Alice with his "nobile stemma," or coat of arms, was, despite his old-fashioned uniform, an aristocrat. Ford and Dr. Caius, self-important members of the new bourgeois class, wore long, black frock coats; Alice, Meg and ...