Verdi: Falstaff

The reissue of this recording marks a double celebration – the bicentenary of Verdi’s birth and the centenary of Solti’s. Solti’s second recording of Verdi’s Falstaff returns to the catalogue. Recorded ‘live’ at the Philharmonie in Berlin, it boasts a thoroughly imaginative cast and magnificent recorded sound.

Studio recording, 1980

Carlo Maria Giulini was one of the 20th century’s greatest conductors along with fellow Italians Arturo Toscanini, Guido Cantelli and Victor de Sabata. His live performances of operas by Verdi, Rossini and Mozart have acquired legendary status while his distinguished recordings have remained in the catalogues to this day.

The recording featuring a Glyndebourne production of Verdi’s Falstaff given in 1955 at the Edinburgh Festival is unique since after extensive research, it has never been published before in any form.

This 1955 performance marked Giulini’s UK debut. The Times said, ‘in the final analysis, it was Mr Giulini’s direction which ensured the opera’s success’, and headlined the review by emphatically stating, ‘A wonderful production’.

The Times reviewed Fernando Corena’s fresh interpretation of Falstaff as follows, ‘Mr Corena’s Falstaff is admirable because it is creditable … he gave us immense dignity, clarity of word, tone, line, and dramatic authority’. Walter Monachesi’s Ford was likewise praised for ‘the excellence of his vocal delivery and unusual dramatic expressiveness’.

The Times also noted: ‘The four women were wonderfully well differentiated, the Quickly of Oralia Dominguez having a touch of succulence that Falstaff renounced and the Alice of Anna Maria Rovere being all sparkle in voice and appearance’.

Giulini’s stunning recording of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia from Covent Garden in 1960 is available on ICAC5046.

Recording Country: United Kingdom

Recording Location: 21-23, 25-29 June & 24 July 1956 / Kingsway Hall, London

Mix Date: 24 Jul 1956

Producer: Walter Legge. Engineer: Christopher Parker

Digitally remastered to 24-bit standard at Abbey Road Studios by Allan Ramsay

Source matrix nos.: YAX 16-21 (Columbia SAX 2254-56)

Falstaff, Verdi's last opera, has a long performing history in Vienna (it was first performed in 1893), and just as long is the list of great conductors who have conducted it at the State Opera.These include Lorin Maazel, who presented his interpretation in 1983. featuring a magnificent ensemble of singers, first and foremost Walter Berry, who in the Indian summer of his career conquered the starring role as fat Sir John. He was equally at home in the joviality of the role and in its ruminative moments as he was in its roguish and impulsive emotional outbursts.The portly knight's object of desire and his antagonist was Pilar Lorengar as Alice Ford, possessed of vocal luminosity and perfect accentuation. Her jealous husband was played as an unbridled, dashing cavalier by the baritone Giorgio Zancanaro.As the young lovers, the silvery-bright soprano of Patricia Wise and the dark-toned tenor of Francisco Araiza complemented each other charmingly, both in timbre and in the naturalness of their intertwined phrasing. Nor did Christa Ludwig hold back in her renowned interpretation of Mistress Quickly, luring both Walter Berry and the Viennese public to their assignations in Ford's house and under Herne's Oak.With an ensemble such as this, the final fugue can truly make us believe that all the world's a joke - and listening to this live recording merely confirms it.

Falstaff is Verdi’s last opera and the culmination of a lifetime of operatic achievement; it was his third Shakespeare opera and a project he kept shrouded in great mystery until the work was almost finished. Despite being written when the composer was in his late 70s it is a work of kaleidoscopic variety that sparkles with its rapidity of utterance and lightness of touch and displays a mastery of ensemble writing.

Recorded in 1991