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. The Paris Opera Orchestra and ChorusA 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 - CinétévéPicture: © Mirko Magliocca / OnP

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

Falstaff 

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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 studied piano and singing with Umberto Grilli. His international career began in 2001 with the lead role of Falstaff at Teatro alla Scala in Milan and the Teatro Verdi in Busseto -a role in which he celebrated its 250th performance at the Vienna Staatsoper in 2016. Ambrogio Maestri then made his role debut at the Teatro alla Scala in emblematic operas by Verdi: Jago (Otello), Renato (Un ballo in Maschera), Don Carlo di Vargas (La forza del destino) and Giorgio Germont (La Traviata). He has been invited to perform at the greatest international opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Paris Opera, London’s Covent Garden, the Vienna Staatsoper, the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. His repertoire includes the roles of Baron Scarpia (Tosca), Amonasro (Aida), the title roles in Simon Boccanegra, Rigoletto, Nabucco, Don Pasquale, and Gérard (Andrea Chénier), Dulcamara (L'elisir d’amore) and Mamma Agata (Viva la Mamma). Ambrogio Maestri has worked with conductors Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Chailly, Daniele Gatti, Daniel Oren, Fabio Luisi, Antonio Pappano, Christian Thielemann, Jeffrey Tate, James Levine, Nello Santi, Marcello Viotti, Marco Armiliato, Gianandrea Noseda and Daniel Harding. He also worked with many stage directors such as Franco Zeffirelli, Robert Carsen, Graham Vick, Peter Stein, Bob Wilson, Laurent Pelly, Mario Martone, Hugo De Ana, Bartlett Sher, Damiano Michieletto, Davide Livermore... During the 2023/24 season, Ambrogio Maestri sings the titles roles in Don Pasquale and Gianni Schicchi at the Vienna Staatsoper, Baron Scarpia (Tosca) in Tokyo and Nagoya, Dulcamara at Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, the title role in Don Pasquale at Teatro alla Scala, and Michonnet (Adriana Lecouvreur) at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona.



At the Paris Opera: L'elisir d’amore (Dulcamara), 2006, 2007, 2015, 2021; Rigoletto (title-role), 2008; Falstaff (title-role), 2013

Ambrogio Maestri

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.&nbsp;She made her performance debuts at the Lille Opera (Prince Charming in&nbsp;Cendrillon);&nbsp;the Theater an der Wien (Idamante in Idomeneo);&nbsp;the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich (Mrs Meg Page in&nbsp;Falstaff). In 2016, she sang the title role of Carmen in Frankfurt and at the Royal Opera House in London.She has appeared as Isolier (Le Comte Ory) at the Opéra Comique in Paris, Adalgisa (Norma),&nbsp;Mélisande (Pélléas et Mélisande) and Serse (Xerxes) in Frankfurt and she also sang the title role in Armide at the Vienna Staatsoper. Other notable performances include&nbsp;Medea (Handel’s Teseo) at the Theater an der Wien, and Carmen at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich and Gstaad.&nbsp;In 2019/2020, she appeared as the Muse and Nicklausse (Les Contes d’Hoffmann) at the Vienna Staatsoper and then made her Metropolitan Opera debut in New York in Le nozze di Figaro (Cherubino).&nbsp;She opened the 2020/2021 season performing the role of Charlotte (Werther) at the Frankfurt Opera and the Vienna Staatsoper. She has recently performed the title roles of&nbsp;La Belle Hélène and Giulio Cesare&nbsp;and Dorabella (Così fan tutte) at the&nbsp;Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Isabella (L'italiana in Algeri) in Milan,&nbsp;Circé at the Royal Opera in Versailles, Carmen at the Opéra-Comique in Paris.During the 23/24 season, she will perform the title-role of Fantasio at the Opéra-Comique, Angelina (La Cenerentola) at the&nbsp;Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, the title-role of Carmen as part of a European tour under the baton of René Jacobs, and Rossini's Stabat Mater in&nbsp;Ljubljana.Gaëlle Arquez also performs in concert and has&nbsp;recorded her first CD, "Ardente Flamme", for Deutsche Grammophon in 2017.At the Paris Opera: Don Giovanni (Zerlina), 2012, 2015 ; Falstaff (Mrs Meg Page), 2013 ; Le Couronnement de Poppée (Drusilla, La Fortuna), 2014 ; Les Contes d’Hoffmann (La Muse, Nicklausse), 2020 ; Alcina (Ruggiero), 2021 ; La Cenerentola (Angelina), 2022 ; Carmen (rôle-titre), 2022 ; Don Giovanni (Donna Elvira), 2023 ;&nbsp;Giulio Cesare (rôle-titre), 2024

Arquez.Gaelle.(c)Julien Benhamou

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

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

Marie-Nicole Lemieux began her career with major Baroque roles, in works such as Orphée et Eurydice, Giulio Cesare and Orlando Furioso. The development of her voice soon enabled her to tackle the French repertoire of the 19th century (Les Troyens, Samson et Dalila, Carmen, Werther), Rossini (Tancrède, L'Italienne à Alger), Verdi (Falstaff, Le Trouvère, Un bal masqué) and Wagner (the Ring). Today, she performs on the great international opera stages (New York, Milan, London, Paris, Salzburg, Zurich, Vienna, Madrid, Brussels...) as well as in concerts and recitals, notably in French and Russian melodies and German Lieder.Her rich and varied discography has won numerous awards, and she records exclusively for Warner Classics. Recent and forthcoming projects include Suor Angelica in Rome, Verdi's Messa di Requiem with the Orchestre national de France and at La Monnaie in Brussels, a concert tour with Les Violons du Roy, Mahler's Kindertotenlieder with the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio-France, Ravel's Shéhérazade with the Orchestre national de France, Brahms' Rhapsody for Viola with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra.Marie-Nicole Lemieux is a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la République française, Chevalier de l'Ordre national du Québec, Compagne des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, member of the Order of Canada and of the Ordre de la Pléiade. She also holds an honorary doctorate from the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi.Opéra national de Paris: Falstaff (Mrs Quickly), 2013; Jephtha (Storgè), 2018; Madame Butterfly (Susuki), 2019

Elena Tsallagova studied at the St Petersburg Conservatory and, after winning first prize in the Rachmaninov competition, began performing at the Mariinsky Theatre before continuing her studies in Europe. She was a member of the Atelier lyrique de l'Opéra national de Paris. Recent engagements include La Renarde (The Cunning Little Vixen) at Munich's Bayerische Staastoper, Zdenka (Arabella), Gilda (Rigoletto), Oscar (A Masked Ball) and Pamina (The Magic Flute) at Deutsche Oper Berlin, Donna Fiorilla (The Turk in Italy) at the Hamburg Staatsoper, Princess Eudoxie (La Juive) at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Virgin (Joan of Arc) at the Salzburg Festival and the title role of Alcina at the Stuttgart Staatsoper. A former member of the Bayerische Staatsoper Munich and Deutsche Oper Berlin ensembles, she remains a regular guest of these houses. Recent concert appearances include Brahms' German Requiem at the BBC Proms, Handel's Messiah at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the Salzburg Festival and the Salzburg Mozarteum. In the 2023-2024 season, she appears as Marta (Die Passagierin) at the Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, Eva (Les Maîtres chanteurs de Nuremberg) and Corinna (Le Voyage à Reims) at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Adina (L'Élixir d'amour) at the Staatsoper Stuttgart and Leïla (Les Pêcheurs de perles) at the Opéra-Ballet de Flandre. Elena Tsallagova has been named Best Singer of the Year 2021 by Opus Classic. At the Opéra national de Paris: Capriccio (Eine italienische Sängerin), 2007; Don Carlo (Una Voce dal cielo), 2008; La Femme sans ombre (Die Stimme des Falken, Ein Hüter der Schwelle des Tempels, Eine Kinderstimme, Eine Stimme), 2008; La Petite Renarde rusée (The Cunning Vixen), 2008; Ariane à Naxos (Najade), 2010; Siegfried (Waldvogel), 2011, 2013; Pelléas et Mélisande (Mélisande), 2012, 2015, 2017; Falstaff (Nannetta), 2013; La Bohème (Musetta), 2014, 2017; Werther (Sophie), 2016.

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;

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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