Verdi's Falstaff

It was a blast at the Liverpool Philharmonic a week ago last Friday.  We really enjoyed the performance of Falstaff by Giuseppe Verdi, a comic opera loosely based on Shakespeare's the Merry Wives of Windsor.
In an opera house, there are sumptuous sets and the cast have the run of the stage, while the orchestra are relegated to the orchestra pit. Here the orchestra took their usual place, the scene changes were suggested by images projected onto the back wall, and the cast sung mainly from the front of the platform, though they also used the stall aisles and choir benches on occasions. From our second row seats, we could almost reach out and touch them.
While Bryn Terfel was excellent in the title role, and the most eye catching name, Rebecca Evans and Anna Dowsley were wonderful merry wives, Wanda Franek was a great bearer of messages, and the two young lovers, Murat can Guvem and Barbara Massaro are worth looking out for.
Opera in Italian is not the easiest to follow, but we were helped by reading the plot summary in the program notes beforehand, a screen at either side showing the English translation, but mainly by the expressiveness of the singers. they were real performers.
They added plenty of their own humour to the score. The kitchen utensils in Falstaff's hat serving as horns for the forest scene was a particularly fun touch. Vasily Petrenko is well able to add an element of humour to his conducting; I did catch some, but found myself watching the singers more.
Verdi wrote only two comic operas, one, not well received in his youth, and then this a masterpiece in his old age. I particularly enjoyed the first scene in Act 3; at the start Falstaff is dejected, but his spirits rise as he sings an ode to the joy of wine. The music expresses it so well.