Micah Tillman

The Wife and I went to see Verdi’s Falstaff last night, performed by the Washington National Opera.

It was a highly educational and culturing experience.  I can now say that I’ve seen two operas — both by Verdi (see here for my review of the first) — and one was marvelous, while the other was atrocious.

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Falstaff is a series of fat jokes, set to music.

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To make it worse, the directing and staging were utterly bewildering.

Falstaff enters the stage before the beginning of the performance (house lights still up, audience — i.e., The Wife, I, and everyone else — still talking) and sits down at a table mid-stage.

The stage is set up to look like the backstage of a theatre.  Scattered across the floor are paper towels, plates, and pizza boxes.

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Falstaff himself (remember, the lights in the theatre are still up; the performance hasn’t officially begun yet) is dressed in an 1800′s style dressing gown.  He begins to write the two letters around which the opera’s plot centers.

The conductor enters at some point, but no one notices because of the bizarre way in which the opera has (not) begun.  Traditionally, the beginning of a musical or opera is marked by the entrance of the conductor, and the applause of everyone.

So, the opera has no beginning.  And it begins with Falstaff backstage in a theatre, surrounded by pizza boxes.

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Then, the action begins.

Two stagehands enter, dressed like they’re in a biker gang in the ’80s.  They also, evidently, work for Falstaff.  So, he’s clearly a major actor in whatever play they’re about to put on.

The biker stagehands then help Falstaff get dressed for whatever play it is they’re about to put on — singing all the while.

They help him put on his fat suit (his bald-head “wig” is already on), still singing.

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Then they get dressed for the play too.

Evidently they aren’t stagehands.

They’re fellow actors, and they’re all getting ready for a play in the ’80s.

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In the next scene, the two ladies to whom the two letters are addressed are likewise getting dressed backstage for the play.  Evidently, they’re both actresses.

This is interesting.  Falstaff is a famous actor for whom stagehands work who aren’t stagehands but fellow actors, and is trying to seduce two actresses from the same production.

All the while, the other stagehands who aren’t also actors — but are from the latter half of the 20th Century or the 21st Century — are setting up the set in the background.  You see the back side of all the sets, since this is all taking place backstage.

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But then Falstaff goes home, and it turns out that his home and backstage at the theatre are the same place.  No play ever happens.  Everyone got dressed up for nothing.

Then, he sets off for the house in which all the ladies are now, which turns out to just be his house (which happens to also be the backstage of a theatre in another part of town) with different paneling on the walls and a few portraits.

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After being tossed into a river, out the front door of the ladies’ house, in a large box of dirty linens, we wakes up on the bank of the river in Act 3, surrounded by five or six such large boxes, all now standing on end.

He, for some reason, is no longer wearing the clothes he was wearing (or, at least not all of them), and is instead covered in a large red cloak.  Perhaps his clothes were washed away in the river, and the red garment washed up on top of him?

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Then it turns out that the large linen hampers aren’t linen hampers, but backstage rolling closets, like the one from which all the actors and actresses were getting their costumes back in Act 1.

The stage manager, complete with wireless mic and clipboard, shows up to give Falstaff some wine (the stage manager shows up several times throughout the opera), and then Falstaff decides to go inside with one of the ladies he finds hiding in one of the rolling closets.

Evidently, he has washed up in front of his home?

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At the end of Act 3, the actor playing Falstaff is stripped of his fat suit by the other characters, as punishment for his trying to seduce two of his fellow actresses (who, evidently, like Falstaff, aren’t thespians after all) — even though most of the opera has been spent making fun of Falstaff for how fat he is.

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So, Falstaff is an actor who isn’t an actor, because he’s playing himself — and he’s being played by an actor who is fat, but isn’t fat enough, and therefore has to play Falstaff as a mildly obese man who has to wear a fat suit to put on the appearance of being morbidly obese.

Likewise, everyone else in the opera are actors — except the stage hands who stay stage hands, and the stage manager — who are also playing themselves.

They all live sometime in the 20th/21st Century — given three of the characters’ outfits before they put on their costumes, the pizza boxes, and the elaborate sets that keep getting moved around by their stagehands in the background — and yet they live in the 1600s, given that they’re playing themselves when they’re in their costumes, and the costumes are from the 1600′s.

The play begins, but doesn’t begin, and ends with one of the characters having his flesh ripped from his bones by his fellow characters, since the actor who plays him isn’t fat enough, and therefore is wearing a fat suit.

Whether the characters know they’re holding pieces of a fat suit as they parade solemnly around the stage, or whether they think they’re carrying massive hunks of flesh, is impossible to tell.

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Fortunately now I know just how monstrously horrible opera can be, and therefore will be able to properly appreciate the truly good productions.

Tags: Falstaff, Washington National Opera