‘Falstaff’ keeps S.F. Opera win streak alive
The Santa Fe Opera is three-for-three this season, with a solid staging of Giuseppe Verdi’s Falsta≠ joining the repertory Saturday.
It’s not quite in the same rarified league as The Barber of Seville, which opened a week ago. True, there are two casting miscues, some scenic design issues and occasional conducting lapses, but it’s very much worth taking in. That’s especially true for those who frown on updated stagings; this one is as Elizabethan and Jacobean as they come.
Scotland’s Sir David McVicar pulled triple duty as the opera’s stage director, scenic designer and costume designer, succeeding admirably in the first and third areas.
His staging was energetic, unforced and grounded in the opera’s music, as well as its libretto. McVicar also made frequent and effective use of two supernumeraries who were uncredited in the program — Falstaff’s young pageboy and a buxom lass who seemed to work in several, um, customer-service functions at The Garter Inn.
The costume designs were splendid, especially those for the female principals, which were luxurious in their fabric choices and flowing in form. The style dates from the Jacobean era, circa 1615, setting up a telling contrast with Falstaff’s old-fashioned and fussy Elizabethan-era courting attire.
McVicar also ranged more widely afield than the usual witches, imps and fairies in the final scene. Here, his witty choices included the appearance of Don Quixote and his horse Rocinante, which has only two legs, both in front, made possible by a cantilevered costume, and a caricatured Queen Elizabeth, smiling strangely while holding a glowing globe in her hand.
The scenic design was problematic on several fronts. It’s a co-production with Scottish Opera, and as a “coming out of the coronavirus” offering last summer outdoors at a car park, it probably worked better than it does here.
McVicar’s utilitarian unit set evokes an Elizabethan theater, not quite Shakespeare’s famous “wooden O” from Henry V, but a big split-level wooden structure with a playing area above, flanked by symmetrical stairs leading to it on either side. There’s not much visual variety in the many scene changes, even though they take too long to execute.
The set is also too big for the Santa Fe stage, scraping the ceiling overhead and so wide that it has to play far downstage. It’s especially problematic in the final scene, which features the entire cast, chorus and supers, all crammed into a space so confining that the outraged villagers can do little more than wave their instruments of torture at Falstaff most of the time, since there’s so little room to move.
The casting of the male roles was solid from top to bottom, while the female roles were more variable.
You’ll never hear the title role sung better than it is here by Quinn Kelsey. He’s widely known as a true Verdi baritone, a rare breed these days, and with good reason. His voice is big and well-focused, produced with incredible consistency throughout his range. At first his portrayal had an edgy, even angry quality that seemed more like Rigoletto, but Kelsey soon found a wider variety of emotional colors in his character.
Roland Wood was an effective adversary as Ford. His singing is softer-grained than Kelsey’s, but it has plenty of punch when necessary, and his acting choices tend to be more subtle. Wood was an excellent Falstaff in the original Scottish Opera production, and it would be great fun to see them swap roles from night to night, in the manner of 19th-century barnstorming actors.
Veteran character tenor Brian Frutiger, a Santa Fe apprentice in 1995 and 1997, was amusing and appropriately sanctimonious as Dr. Caius; aspiring character tenor Thomas Cilluffo, an apprentice last season and this, was amusing and versatile as Bardolfo, one of Falstaff’s carousing buddies who ends up “married” to Dr. Caius at the opera’s end. As Pistola, Falstaff’s other companion, bass Scott Connor was imposing physically and vocally.
Alexandra LoBianco was a puzzling Mrs. Ford. She has a big dramatic soprano voice and sang well, after a less-than-impressive start. But her acting was often rudimentary in a part that’s a female equivalent of Figaro, plotting and scheming to drive the action forward. She seems better suited temperamentally and vocally to grand roles such as Tosca and Aida.
Two former apprentices, mezzo-sopranos Ann McMahon Quintero and Megan Marino, were Mistress Quickly and Meg Page, respectively. Marino has a gift for creating unique, three-dimensional characterizations and made Mrs. Page more memorable than usual as a result. A terrific Cherubino in last season’s The Marriage of Figaro, Marino also seized on one of Mrs. Page’s few moments in the vocal spotlight — announcing the supposed arrival of Mr. Ford during the Act II finale — to offer a very funny portrayal of intentionally bad acting.
Quintero was miscast in her much larger role. She doesn’t have the vocal heft it requires and was often nearly inaudible. And while Arrigo Boito’s text stripped out much of her character’s quirkiness in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Quintero couldn’t find anything particularly interesting to replace it with onstage.
Elena Villalón and former apprentice Eric Ferring offered charm and lyrical vocalism as the young lovers Nannetta and Fenton. Their solos near the beginning of the Windsor-fore-stat-night final scene effectively established the transition from hurly-burly action to a delicate woodland environment (at least at first), with some beautifully floated high notes.
Conductor Paul Daniel elicited much impressive playing from the orchestra, especially the crisp, well-balanced contributions by the winds and brass. Coordination between the orchestra and the stage was sometimes out of kilter, however, and the orchestra was simply too loud and swamped the singers in several forte passages.
In sum, though, this Falsta≠ offers a mostly excellent cast in a lively staging of a genuine comic masterpiece.