The first performance of Falstaff by Antonio Salieri took place on January 3, 1799 in Vienna. Harmonious, perfectly balanced musically and dramaturgically, the work, with risky (on the verge of a foul) jokes, not inferior to Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, was a great success. The plot of "The Merry Wives of Windsor" by Shakespeare became the ideal basis for the classic buffa opera with traditional disguises and reincarnations, love affairs and the remorse of the glutton and libertine Falstaff in the finale. (The latter is a tribute to the moral ideals of the Enlightenment, in Shakespeare the hero escapes punishment.) Salieri and his co-author DeFranceschi were the first to choose this Shakespearean story for writing an opera libretto.
Shortly after the premiere, "Falstaff" sold out into "smash hits" (one of the themes became the basis of the young Beethoven's variations). But with the beginning of the century of romanticism, as well as other operas by Salieri, it was forgotten for a long time. In the next century, music lovers associated Shakespeare's plot exclusively with Verdi's opera. The revival of interest in Salieri's Falstaff, as well as in his work in general, occurred at the beginning of the 21st century. Now his "Falstaff" is presented in the theaters of Munich, Toronto, Vienna ...
He first appeared on the Russian stage at the Bolshoi in 2021. It was precisely such operas that the founder of the Chamber Musical Theater, Boris Pokrovsky, liked to open to his faithful audience. The work of the once famous master is presented by a production team led by conductor Ivan Velikanov and director Alexander Khukhlin. The well-known plot is recreated in an interpretation that reflects the psychology of modern society. Alexander Khukhlin stages the story of Falstaff as an infantile and pure person who wants to know something he has not yet tried: food, drinks, relationships with women. The naive Falstaff is "an artist by nature, he just doesn't know it himself." Violating by his appearance the orderly order of a respectable English suburb, he leads its inhabitants "into an incredible frenzy": from "people in cases" they turn into teenagers.
