Falstaff mini-review
I’m posting this from the iSchool’s main computing lab, in the interval between finishing a statistics midterm and whisking off for a night out. (I still don’t have access to teh internets at home. I miss you, internets.) This is just to say that I really enjoyed Falstaff, and if anyone reading this is still trying to decide whether to see it, then consider this a thumbs-up. Lovely singing all around, and an engagingly funny production, despite what seemed like the world’s longest scene changes (I all but exchanged life histories with the people in the next seats, not that that was a hardship).
I’ve been trying to formulate a thought about how some of the characters perceive themselves as taking part in very different types of dramas — Ford (briefly) channels Othello, though fortunately without any of the tragic consequences, while Falstaff in the last act gets dropped into what seems like an eerier version of the forest from A Midsummer Night’s Dream — and even though we, and all the female characters (who mastermind the whole plot), know much better, it’s still all there in the music nonetheless. But that’s about as far as the formulation has gotten.
I’m thinking of getting a season subscription next year. Question is, am I really going to want to see Cyrano and Hansel and Gretel? Must ponder.
Hansel and Gretel, perhaps. I used to have a piano arrangement of the Evening Prayer, and thought it lovely. But I don’t know the rest of the opera at all.