Andrea Battistoni - Falstaff - BLU-RAY

All the world's a joke, says Falstaff, and these words are truly given weight by Ambrogio Maestri, one of the finest Falstaffs of our time. The Italian baritone brings a powerful, versatile voice to his role, but also brings to his character a hilarious buffo quality. Daniele Gatti, one of the most acclaimed opera conductors working today, leads a stunning cast of singers, including Barbara Frittoli as Alice Ford. This boisterous production by stage director Sven-Eric Bechtolf delivers a Falstaff that is a fireworks display of high spirits. InchBechtolf turns Verdi-¦s last opera Inchmusically and dramaturgically into a feast of life and of love of life.Inch

When the wife of a Protestant preacher is an adulterer, problems are inevitable from the outset of Verdi's Stiffelio. Even today the finale seems astonishingly bold superficially it deals with forgiveness and reconciliation, but the orchestral writing is in such striking contrast that Verdi appears to toll the death knell of the protagonists' marriage.

Based in part on Shakespeare's the Merry Wives of Windsor and King Henry IV, Falstaff is Verdi's last stage work and his only comic opera. The humor in this multilayered masterpiece is distinctly wry, for all the main characters exhibit an array of human weaknesses that are implacably exposed by Verdi and his librettist Arrigo Boito.