On 23 May, the Mariinsky II will host the premiere of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Falstaff. The production is prepared by an Italian team with stage director Andrea De Rosa at the helm. De Rosa has already wowed the St Petersburg audience with another production of Giuseppe Verdi’s – the opera Simon Boccanegra – which premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre to good buzz in the 2016/2017 theatrical season. The director, who has previously staged Shakespeare's Falstaff at drama theatres, started his work at the Mariinsky Theatre with a thorough rehearsal of each line and mise-en-scène with the Mariinsky Opera artistes. Production Designer: Simone Maninno. Costume Designer: Alessandro Lai. Lighting Designer: Pasquale Mari. Musical Director and Conductor: Valery Gergiev.
The premiere performances at the Mariinsky II will also take place on 27 May (at 3 pm and 8 pm). Giuseppe Verdi nurtured the idea of writing a comic opera for some forty years. In 1887, his librettist and friend Arrigo Boito, who was aware of the composer’s idea, adapted a libretto based on William Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor with additional comic interludes from Henry IV. “I’ve wanted to write a comic opera for forty years, and I’ve known ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ for fifty… however, the usual buts which are everywhere always prevented me from satisfying this wish of mine. Now Boito has resolved all the ‘buts’, and has made me a lyric comedy unlike any other. I have fun making its music; without any plans whatsoever, and I don’t even know if I’ll ever finish it, ” Giuseppe Verdi confided in one of his letters.
Falstaff’s premiere in Milan in 1893 turned into a grand celebration of the composer’s 80th anniversary. The opera was first performed at the Mariinsky Theatre in Russia just a year after the world premiere, on 17 January 1894. The best vocalists took part in the performance under the baton of Eduard Nápravník, including Arkady Chernov, Ivan Goncharov, Mikhail Mikhailov, Yevgeniya Mravina, and Fyodor Stravinsky. Despite the opera’s initial success with the Russian public, it was coolly received by critics and soon left the Mariinsky Theatre stage for more than a century. The Mariinsky Theatre revived Falstaff only in 2006 and presented a brand new production. Today some of the artistes who took part in the performances back in 2000s are ready to get back on stage for the premiere shows.
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