Act I

Act II

Act III

Couv_Falstaff_780x906

Libretto

There is no work to compare with Falstaff. In his last opera, Giuseppe Verdi, then aged eighty-four, delivered, from behind the mask of his buffoon-like rascal of a hero, the testimony of a life approaching its end and whose moral, like that of the opera, would be: life is but a joke. This indefinable comedy, tinged with pessimism, defies all the conventions of 19th century Italian opera and testifies to Verdi’s passion for the theatre. Dominique Pitoiset’s witty, humorous production brings these eccentric characters to life and their sparkling interplay maintains a perfect balance between fantasy and reality, the very essence of the work. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris A co-production of Opéra de Paris Production and Cinétévé With the participation of France Télévisions and with the support of the Orange Foundation, patron of audiovisual transmissions and the National Center for Cinema and Moving Images. Director : Philippe Béziat© 2013 - Opéra de Paris Production - CinétévéVisuel ©Mirko Magliocca / OnP

Sir John Falstaff: a ruined gentleman, a buffoon and a boaster Ford: a rich man of Windsor Alice Ford: Ford’s wife Meg Page: a friend of Alice Mrs Quickly: a townswoman of Windsor Nannetta: Alice and Ford’s daughter Fenton: in love with Nannetta Pistola and Bardolfo: Falstaff’s servants Dr Caius: Nannetta’s unwelcome suitor

Falstaff 

There is no work to compare with Falstaff. In his last opera, Giuseppe Verdi, then aged eighty-four, delivered, from behind the mask of his buffoon-like rascal of a hero, the testimony of a life approaching its end and whose moral, like that of the o

Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi was born in 1813 into a modest but relatively well-to-do family in the hamlet of Le Roncole, near Busseto. He received his first musical training from the village organist. In 1824, he became the organist at the church in Busseto. After following music lessons with the organist and composer Ferdinando Provesi, he was noticed by Antonio Barezzi, a spirits merchant and music aficionado who also founded the Filarmonici (Societa filarmonica), the town’s amateur orchestra. Barezzi would become Verdi’s patron and sponsor and the composer would ultimately marry Barezzi’s daughter Margherita in 1836. A stipend enabled him to continue his studies in Milan where he took private lessons with Vincenzo Lavigna, a teacher at La Scala, and a friend of Rossini. On the recommendations of the impresario Bartolomeo Merelli, his first opera, Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio was performed at La Scala in Milan. For a short while following the death of his two children and then his wife Margherita, and after the relative fiasco that befell his second opera, Un giorno di regno, Verdi considered abandoning music altogether. However, he started composing again when Merelli offered him the libretto for Nabucco. That opera was a huge success at its premiere at La Scala on March 9, 1842 and it did not take long before all of Italy was singing Va pensiero, the anthem in which the chorus of slaves lament their lost freedom. From then on, Verdi became the bard of Italian unification. Most of the works that followed would be operas with patriotic undertones (I Lombardi alla prima crocciata, Ernani, Giovanna d’Arco, Attila, La Battaglia di Legnano…). In 1847, Verdi left for London for the world premiere of I Masnadieri, then settled in Paris where he met up with Giuseppina Strepponi, who would create the role of Abigaille. They would never be separated again. Verdi purchased the property at Sant’Agata, near Busseto and openly enlisted in the struggle for the liberation of Italy, which was then occupied by the Austrians. After 1850, Verdi was unrivalled in Italy. In particular, his popular trilogy, Rigoletto – Il Trovatore – La Traviata dates from this period.Les Vêpres siciliennes (Paris, 1855), Simon Boccanegra (La Fenice in Venice, 1857), Un ballo in maschera (Rome, 1859), La Forza del destino (Saint Petersburg, 1862), Don Carlos (Paris, 1867), Aida (Cairo, 1871), the Messa di Requiem (Milan, 1874), Otello (Milan, 1887), and Falstaff (Milan, 1893) would follow. In 1861, he was elected deputy of Busseto. He passed away in Milan on January 27, 1901. With no heir at the time of his death, Verdi bequeathed his copyrights to the retirement home for aging musicians that he had founded in Milan.

Born in Pavia (Italy), Ambrogio Maestri made a particularly strong debut in 2001 in the lead role of Falstaff at La Scala in Milan and the Teatro Verdi in Busseto under the direction of Riccardo Muti. It was again under the direction of Riccardo Muti that he would first perform the roles of Iago (Otello), Renato (Un ballo in Maschera), Don Carlo (La Forza del destino) and Germont (La Traviata) on the stage in Milan. He has been invited to perform at the greatest international opera houses (the Metropolitan Opera, the Paris Opera, London’s Covent Garden, the Vienna Staatsoper, the Deutsche Oper of Berlin, and the Verona Arenas) where he sang the roles of Count di Luna in Il Trovatore, Amonasro in Aida, Rolando in La Battaglia di Legnano, the title roles in Simon Boccanegra, Rigoletto, Nabucco and of course Falstaff, one of his favourite roles. He has performed under the aegis of some of the most famous conductors and directors, including Zubin Mehta, Daniele Gatti, Daniel Oren, Fabio Luisi, Antonio Pappano, Jeffrey Tate, Nello Santi, Marcello Viotti, Marco Armiliato, Gianandrea Noseda, Renato Palumbo, Daniel Harding, Franco Zeffirelli, Robert Carsen, Graham Vick, Peter Stein, Robert Wilson, Laurent Pelly, Mario Martone, Hugo De Ana, and Bartlett Sher. In 2006, he performed the role of Dulcamara for the first time at the Paris Opera. Over the last few seasons he has tackled Puccini and verismo. He has performed the roles of Scarpia in Tosca at Torre del Lago, Alfio in Cavalleria Rusticana at the Metropolitan Opera, and Tonio in Pagliacci at La Scala in Milan. In 2012, he played the role of a 1940s opera singer in the Ferzan Oztepek film Magnifica Presenza. In 2013, the year of Verdi’s bicentenary, he performed Falstaff, his role of choice, at the Paris Opera, the Zurich Opera, the Salzburg Festival, the Munich Festival, in Tokyo, as well as at the Metropolitan Opera (where he celebrated his 200th performance in that role). More recently, he has performed in Pagliacci in Vienna, Tosca in Barcelona, Otello in Turin, Aida in Rome, Falstaff in Milan, Munich, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, and Amsterdam with the Concertgebouw Orchestra. He has also performed in Cavalleria rusticana in Salzburg, Rigoletto in Vienna, and Nabucco in Barcelona…Projects: Tosca in Madrid, Vienna, Berlin, Munich, and Don Pasquale at the Metropolitan Opera and Milan’s La Scala.

Ambrogio Maestri

Artur Ruciński made his debut in his home city of Warsaw in 2002 singing the title role of Eugene Onegin. In 2010, he was invited to the Deutsche Oper in Berlin by Daniel Barenboim to perform the same role. He has appeared on stage at numerous venues, including the Bregenz Festival (Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s The Passenger), the Hamburg Staatsoper (Lucia di Lammermoor), the Liceu in Barcelona (King Roger), as well as in Valencia (Lescaut in Manon under the baton of Lorin Maazel and Eugene Onegin), and the Verona Arena (Mercutio in Roméo et Juliette). He made his U.S. debut in Los Angeles (as Marcello in La Bohème), and then sang at the Paris Opera (Ford in Falstaff), London’s Royal Opera House Covent Garden (Germont in La Traviata), the Salzburg Festival (Count di Luna in Il Trovatore) and Milan’s La Scala (Paolo Albiani in Simon Boccanegra). He returned to the Verona Arena for Il Trovatore and La Traviata and appeared in I Masnadieri at Venice’s La Fenice and the Verdi Festival in Parma, then in Il Trovatore at the Wiener Festwochen. He sang in Eugene Onegin in Munich under the baton of Kirill Petrenko and then again in Bologna. His other operas include Falstaff in Frankfurt, Attila (Ezio) in Warsaw, La Traviata at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, Don Pasquale in Valencia, and Lucia di Lammermoor in Hamburg and Zurich. In 2015, he sang the title role in Don Giovanni at the Paris Opera and performed at Vienna’s Konzerthaus for the Christmas in Vienna concert. He has played Eugene Onegin and Enrico Ashton at London’s Royal Opera House, Marcello (La Bohème) at the Liceu in Barcelona and made his Metropolitan Opera debut in New York in Madama Butterfly (Sharpless). Last season, he returned to the Paris Opera in Lucia di Lammermoor, then to the Royal Opera House for La Traviata, and then the Liceu in Barcelona for Il Trovatore. He also gave his first performance at the New National Theatre in Tokyo (Enrico Ashton). He has just made his San Francisco Opera debut in the role of Germont. Artur Ruciński also performs in concert with a repertoire ranging from Handel’s Messiah to Penderecki’s St. Luke Passion.Projects: His debut appearances at the Rome Opera (I Masnadieri) and at the Teatro Real de Madrid (Lucia di Lammermoor), and the title role in Gianni Schicchi at the Paris Opera.

Rucinski.Artur

Paolo Fanale was born in Palermo and made his stage debut in Padua singing the role of Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni. Before long, he was invited to perform at many of the great international opera venues (Milan’s La Scala, the New York Metropolitan Opera, the Théâtre du Châtelet and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, the Salzburg Festival, The Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, Berlin’s Staatsoper and Deutsche Oper, Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu, the Theater an der Wien, etc.) He made his Paris Opera debut in 2013 in Falstaff (Fenton). Over the past few seasons, he has made debut appearances at the Royal Opera House in London (Rinuccio in Gianni Schicchi), the Vienna Staatsoper (Fenton) and the Rome Opera (Leicester in Maria Stuarda). He also sang in Die Zauberflöte at the Soirées Lyriques Festival in Sanxay. His other performances include a concert version of Lucia di Lammermoor at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Così fan tutte at the Bayerische Staatsoper, La Favorite (in concert) at the Marseille Opera, Don Giovanni at the Berlin Staatsoper and the Dresden Semperoper, La Clemenza di Tito at the Lausanne Opera, L’Elisir d’amore at the Vienna Staatsoper and Rossini’s Stabat Mater at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia de Rome. In 2015, he sang the part of Pelléas at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. He has sung under the direction of numerous conductors, including Claudio Abbado (with whom he recorded Mozart’s Mass in C Minor and Schubert’s Mass in E Flat Major at the 2012 Salzburg Festival), Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Daniele Gatti, James Levine, Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Daniel Oren, Antonio Pappano,&nbsp;Michele Mariotti, Diego Fasolis and Jordi Savall.

Projects: Iopas (Les Troyens) at the Vienna Staatsoper, Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni) at the Teatro Comunale in Bologna and then in concert with the Hanover-based NDR Radiophilharmonie; Ferrando (Così fan tutte) at Munich’s Bayerische Staatsoper, London’s Royal Opera House and in Las Palmas, Pylade (Iphigénie en Tauride)&nbsp;at the
Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, debut as Lenskij in Eugene Onegin at Matsumoto Festival.&nbsp;

Raúl Giménez was born in Argentina and made his debut in 1980 singing the role of Ernesto in Don Pasquale at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. In 1984, he performed for the first time in Europe at the Wexford Festival in Le Astuzie Femminili. Soon thereafter he was invited to Geneva (Il Turco in Italia), the Rossini Festival in Pesaro (Il Signor Bruschino), Venice (Armida) and Amsterdam (Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria). During the 1989 / 1990 season, he made his debut appearance at London’s Covent Garden (Don Pasquale), the Vienna Staatsoper (The Barber of Seville) and in the United States (Don Pasquale in Dallas). Since then, he has performed in many of the world’s great opera houses, including Milan’s La Scala (Tancredi, La Cenerentola), the Paris Opera (Lucia di Lammermoor, The Barber of Seville, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Falstaff), Munich (The Barber of Seville, La Cenerentola, L’Italiana in Algeri, Anna Bolena), New York’s Metropolitan Opera (The Barber of Seville, La Cenerentola), the Pesaro Festival (L’Occasione fa il Ladro, Tancredi, La Pietra del Paragone, Adina), Houston, Los Angeles, Toronto, Montreal, Madrid (La Cenerentola, La Somnambule, La Favorite, La Pietra del Paragone, Don Giovanni), Rome, Naples, Palermo, Florence, Verona, Genoa, Ravenna, the Aix Festival, Berlin, Hamburg, and Frankfurt, under the batons of Claudio Abbado, Maurizio Benini, Bruno Campanella, Daniele Gatti, Jesus Lopez Cobos, Evelino Pido, Alberto Zedda, and Gianluigi Gelmetti… More recently, he sang the role of Don Basilio in The Marriage of Figaro at the Liceu in Barcelona, the Teatro Real in Madrid and the Grand Théâtre in Geneva, Dr. Cajus at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the Liceu in Barcelona and the Paris Opera, Monsieur Triquet (Eugene Onegin) in Geneva, the Abbé de Chazeuil (Adriana Lecouvreur) at the Paris Opera and La Monnaie in Brussels, Ménélas (La Belle Hélène), Egeo (Cavalli’s Il Giasone) and Dr. Cajus at the Grand Théâtre in Geneva. Raúl Giménez regularly gives masterclasses and he is the artistic director of Barcelona’s International Academy of Music. •

Giménez.Raúl

Born in Vladikavkaz (Russia), Elena Tsallagova studied at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. She performed at the Mariinsky Theatre and won first prize in the Rachmaninov vocal competition in Saint Petersburg. She studied repertoire and interpretation in France with Ileana Cotrubas. In 2006, she entered the Paris Opera’s Atelier Lyrique for young artists. In 2007, she sang the roles of Zelmira (Haydn’s Armida) at the Salzburg Festival and Livietta (Cimarosa’s Don Calandrino) under the direction of Riccardo Muti at the Ravenna Festival. In 2008, she performed the lead role in Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen at the Paris Opera. The DVD of the production was honoured at the 2009 Victoires de la Musique. For two years she was under contract with Munich’s Bayerische Staatsoper, where she sang Despina (Così fan tutte), Sophie (Werther), Nannetta (Falstaff), Zerlina (Don Giovanni), Musetta (La Bohème), Creusa (Medea in Corinto), Isotta (La Femme silencieuse), and Donna Clara (Der Zwerg). In 2009, she made her British debut playing Nannetta with the Glyndebourne Touring Opera. In 2010, she sang Despina in Tokyo under the direction of Paolo Carignani. After making her debut at the 2011 Pesaro Festival, she sang Corinna and the Comtesse de Folleville (Le Voyage à Reims) in Antwep and Ghent under the musical direction of Alberto Zedda. She played Fortuna and Dama (L'incoronazione di Poppea) and Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro) at the Teatro Real in Madrid, Poppea (Handel’s Agrippina) in Ghent and Oviedo, Nannetta at the 2013 Glyndebourne Festival, and she performed Rachmaninov’s The Bells at the Lucerne Festival. In 2012, she performed the role of Mélisande for the first time at the Paris Opera where she also played Nannetta, the Woodbird in Siegfried and Musetta in La Bohème. Since the start of the 2013 / 2014 season, she has been a permanent artist at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin where she has sung the roles of Pamina (The Magic Flute), Nannetta, Gilda (Rigoletto), Micaela (Carmen), Sophie (Rosenkavalier) and Adina (L’Élixir d’amour). She recently sang the role of Mélisande in a new production by the Bayerische Staatsoper of Munich.Projects: Marfa (The Tsar’s Bride) at the Berlin Staatsoper, the lead role in The Cunning Little Vixen at the Glyndebourne Festival.

Elena Tsallagova 2015 (photo Javier del Real) N&B

In the year 2000, Marie-Nicole Lemieux won the Queen Fabiola and Lied Prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium. It was the start of an international career that has taken her to the world’s most famous opera venues and festivals. She is as proficient a performer in the baroque repertoire as she is with 19th century French opera (Les Troyens, Pelléas et Mélisande, Samson et Dalila, Carmen). She is also versed in Rossini (Guillaume Tell, Tancredi, L’Italiana in Algeri) and Verdi (Mrs Quickly in Falstaff, Azucena in Il Trovatore, and Ulrica in Un ballo in maschera). Marie-Nicole Lemieux sings in concert with some of the world’s most prestigious orchestras and she also performs in recital (French and Russian melodies, German lied). Over the last few seasons she has appeared in numerous productions including Falstaff in London, Vienna, Paris, Milan, Montreal, Toronto and New York (Metropolitan Opera), Puccini’s Il trittico (Zia Principessa and Zita) at the Theater an der Wien, L’Italiana in Algeri (Isabella) and Tancredi at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Madama Butterfly at the Liceu in Barcelona, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Chorégies d’Orange Festival and the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Il Trovatore alongside Placido Domingo and Anna Netrebko in Salzburg, Orange and Madrid, Un ballo in maschera at La Monnaie in Brussels and the Zurich Opera, Enesco’s Œdipe at the Royal Opera House in London, Tancredi at La Monnaie in Brussels, Les Troyens (Cassandre) under the direction of John Nelson, Samson et Dalila at the Montreal Opera as well as a concert version at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Jephta (Storgè) at the Paris Opera, and Handel’s Agrippina with the Il Pomo d’Oro ensemble in Luxembourg, Madrid, Barcelona, Paris and London… During the 2019-2020 season she is performing Madame Butterfly (Suzuki) at the Paris Opera, Falstaff and L’Italiana in Algeri at the Vienna Staatsoper and L’Incoronazione di Poppea (Nerone) at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. She has made numerous recordings, including Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été, Wagner’s Wesendoncklieder, Mahler’s Rückertlieder, L’Heure exquise (an album of French melodies), Ne me refuse pas (an album of French opera arias with the Orchestre National de France, for which she won the coveted Prix international du Disque from the Académie Charles Cros), Opera Arias (Gluck, Mozart, and Haydn with the Violons du Roy), Streams of Pleasure (Handel) and Chansons perpétuelles (with Roger Vignoles).&nbsp;

lemieux

After earning a degree in musicology, Gaëlle Arquez was awarded the 2009 Prize for voice at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris. In 2011 she was named “Opera Revelation” at the Victoires de la Musique Classique. She made her performance debuts at the Lille Opera (Massenet’s Cendrillon); the Paris Opera (Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Meg Page in Falstaff, Drusilla and Fortuna in L’Incoronazione di Poppea); the Theater an der Wien (Idamante in Idomeneo); the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich (Falstaff). In 2016, she sang the title role of Carmen in Frankfurt and made her Royal Opera House debut in London in the same production. The following year, she once more sang the role of Carmen, first at the Bregenz Festival and then for her debut at the Teatro Real in Madrid. She has appeared as Isolier (Le Comte Ory) at the Opéra Comique in Paris, Adalgisa (Norma), Mélisande and Serse in Frankfurt and she also sang the title role in Armide for her debut at the Vienna Staatsoper. Other notable performances include Guilhen (Vincent d’Indy’s Fervaal) at the Radio France Occitanie Festival in Montpellier, Medea (Handel’s Teseo) at the Theater an der Wien, and Carmen at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich and the Gstaad Festival. In 2019/2020, she appeared as the Muse and Nicklausse (Les Contes d’Hoffmann) at the Vienna Staatsoper and the Paris Opera and then made her Metropolitan Opera debut in New York in Le nozze di Figaro (Cherubino). She opened the 2020/2021 season performing the role of Charlotte in Werther at the Frankfurt Opera and the Vienna Staatsoper. She has recently performed the title roles of La Belle Hélène and Giulio Cesare in Egitto at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Isabella (L'italiana in Algeri) in Milan, Ruggiero (Alcina) and Angelina (La Cenerentola) at the Paris Opera, La Merope with the Barockorchester in Basel, Circé at the Royal Opera in Versailles, Dorabella in Così fan tutte at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.Gaëlle Arquez also performs in concert and has recorded her first CD, Ardente Flamme, for Deutsche Grammophon in 2017.

Arquez.Gaelle

Dominique Pitoiset studied architecture and then visual arts at the Beaux-Arts in Paris before enrolling at the École Supérieure d’art dramatique du Théâtre national de Strasbourg (TNS). On graduating in 1981, he became an assistant to Jean-Pierre Vincent, Manfred Karge and Matthias Langhoff. In 1983, he decided to found his own company as a parallel venture. In 1996, he was appointed director of the Dijon National Theatre Bourgogne. His eclectic choices led him to juggle contemporary texts and repertoire classics and cast a unique perspective on both. He staged a trilogy of Shakespearean works: Othello at the Théâtre national de Bretagne and the Théâtre national de Chaillot, The Tempest at the Teatro Farnese di Parma for the Teatro Due, and Verdi’s Macbeth at the Teatro Regio in Parma. He became associate director at the Teatro Due in Parma and the Teatro Stabile in Turin. He then taught directing and stage design at the Institute of architecture in Venice, then in Milan and Turin. From 2004 to 2013, he headed the CDN in Bordeaux (TnBA-Théâtre national de Bordeaux en Aquitaine). In 2007, he created the École Supérieure de Théâtre de Bordeaux en Aquitaine. In 2009, he began a cycle of North American theatre productions with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? and then Death of a Salesman. In June 2011, he directed Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac for the Ruhrfestspiele in Recklinghausen. In 2014, he became an associate artist at the Théâtre Bonlieu Scène nationale in Annecy for a period of three years and moved his company to Dijon, his home town. He premiered the third instalment of his American trilogy: August: Osage County by Tracy Letts in Annecy and, in 2016, he directed Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui with Philippe Torreton. He has directed numerous operas during his career, including Don Giovanni and Falstaff at the Paris Opera, Haydn’s L’Isola disabitata, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, and Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice for the Paris Opera’s Atelier Lyrique, The Turn of the Screw and Salomé at the Bordeaux Opera, La Bohème at the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse.

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