Falstaff

Opera in 3 actsLibretto: Arrigo Boito according to Merry Kumoszek z Windsor and Henryk IvpraPremiere: 9/02/1893, MilanPremiere of this production: 17/04/2026, Teatr Wielki - National OperaOriginal Italian language version with Polish and English subtitles

There are scenes of an erotic nature in the performance

Verdi's last work is, in popular tradition, a cheerful comedy about a fat drunk who cynically seduces two women and is severely punished by them. However, when one carefully traces the Shakespearean original and scrutinizes carefully the extraordinary richness of musical motifs, one finds the second dark bottom of the mysterious work that the aged, accomplished composer consciously wrote as his farewell to a vast body of work, his own impressive life and world, which he judged with a philosophical grimace as painful The Creator's joke about people and their actions. Getting to this other bottom and showing its highest class artistic beauty seems worth moving away from the stereotype of the main character dealing as if only with the use of the remnants of the delights of the table and bed and the fairground clowning.

It is worth showing who Falstaff really is and why he became what we see him in the vicissitudes of the stage. Therefore, in the play, the director proposed a kind of prologue with the music of the overture of one of Verdi's first operas, in which he tells about the tragic end for Falstaff of his merry happy friendship with Prince “Henry”, who suddenly becomes King Henry V and brutally removes his guardian and mentor from royal life. Many of us have experienced such an episode when a streak of joy and success ends in an instant throwing us out and condemning us to loneliness, poverty and lack of prospects.

It shows the moment when Falstaff finds himself on the verge of despair and death. It is possible that after such a push away from him by the man he loved, he decided to drink himself to death. He puts this banal plan into action convinced that the best place is the brothel, in which he lived among the fallen like him. He's angry and bitter. His sense of humor is scathing and aggressive. The directors avoid the image of a respectable factionalist in order to use unusual motifs that unfold every moment in the orchestra. But Falstaff's plan gets complicated when he witnesses the pure love of two young lovers. Suddenly he understands that it is not the prostitutes who are the solace at the hour of death, but love in the arms of a beloved, faithful woman.

The idea of seducing the one who arouses his most vivid feelings becomes a trap not only because the chosen one is married, but also because of his own clever decision to book a doppelganger just in case. When women communicate with each other, the clever seducer is already heading only towards defeat and, as a result, towards death, which he meets on the border of real reality and drunken malignant. There, in the final reflection on his farewell to the world, he comes to the conclusion that everyone is deceived and the world is a gloomy joke.

Choir and Orchestra of the Teatru Wielkiego - National OperasDancers and Dancers, Mateusz Sobczak (Henry V Diabeł), Tomasz Nerkowski (Divine Death), Julia Witczak, Nikola Zientarska