Verdi: Falstaff.(Opera Review)

* McGreevy, Persson, Gubisch, Hellekant; Wi. White, Beuron, Jupither; Orchestre de Paris, Festival Aix-en-Provence (2001), Mazzola. Subtitles in English, Italian, Spanish and Japanese. 125 mins.

For a Falstaff, one needs, first of all, a Falstaff. The ideal candidate, besides being a singing actor of uncommon delicacy and broad (very broad) humor, should be a little preposterous--we should not be able to imagine him as a lover, but we should sense the charm that prevents anyone from remaining angry at him. That is, perhaps, the moral of the opera: since we're all fools, laughter excuses everything.

Willard White's Falstaff is far too slim -merely stout--and far too nattily turned out to be credibly gutter-bound (he rises from his rumpled bed with a silk cravat superbly tied), and he is sexy enough to remember Mistress Quickly's original occupation and haul her into a closet for doings unmentioned in Boito's libretto. But he is peerlessly vain, and he sings very well, except in "Quand'ero paggio," where he is hampered by being directed to waltz Geraldine McGreevy's matronly Alice Ford around the stage the whole time.

Members of the Aix-en-Provence cast are all in fine voice, the particular standouts being Marcus Jupither's sumptuous Ford (looking far too ...