The Prodigious Belly of Falstaff. Now Showing (through his shirt) at Seattle Opera

Peter Rose (Falstaff) and Stephanie Blythe (Dame Quickly), © Rozarii Lynch photo

Verdi's Falstaff is over two hours of comical farce about a fat man...except it really isn't. The opera is based around the theme of ridicule of the man, all of it directly or indirectly in regard to his girth. However, upon further reflection, I realized that it's not really his size that constitutes the core of the issue. He is an archetype of greed, and of gluttony. His appetites are inappropriately huge — he eats too much, he drinks too much, he courts too many women at a time. He's also a thief — of other men's wives and property, sometimes successful, often not, but always driven by wanting more, more, more.

While the surrounding characters call him monster, he himself revels in the bounty of his prodigious belly. He seems to hold it before him as a sign of his acquisitions and conquests.

Rose (Falstaff), Ashraf Sewailam (Pistol) and Steven Goldstein (Bardolph) © Rozarii Lynch photo

During the course of Verdi's opera — based on Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Winsor — Falstaff is made a fool of. He is led down paths of deception, dumped in the river and made even more absurd when he is tricked into wearing a pair of horns under false pretenses. But ultimately he doesn't really exhibit much beyond the slightest air of repentance. Throughout, he stands as symbol of the greedy consumption of the upper classes.

The music of Falstaff is not terribly thrilling. It doesn't contain any virtuosic arias or any fabulous overblown musical passages. It doesn't have any particularly memorable or well-known melodies, but this fits the character of the piece. The music is light, as fits a comic opera. I suspect that Verdi was rather tired by the very late stage in his career. He'd used up all of the glorious excessive music he had in him already. But Falstaff is easy to listen to.

Svetla Vassileva (Alice Ford) © Rozarii Lynch photo

The best parts of Seattle Opera's production are Peter Kazaras's wonderful staging, Donald Eastman's sets and Connie Yun's lighting design. Edged in sets of bleachers, with the "offstage" singers often visible to the audience, the effect makes visible the opera's Shakespearean origins. Before a single note sounds, the singers fuss about the stage, getting into — and out of — clothing, chatting and drinking out of pewter steins. So the audience is taken into the actor/singer's side of the production, setting the relaxed character of the opera to come.

Some of the most powerful and interesting uses of the set were between scenes, as frozen silhouettes of actors and objects played against the solid-color background. The effect was quite wonderful.

© Rozarii Lynch photo

As the opera winds down towards its conclusion, just like many Shakespearean comedies, there's a jumble of deceptions with true love finally winning out and Sir Falstaff getting nothing of what he was trying to get. There's also a surprising ending in regard to the staging, which is more effective without me spoiling it for you.

Seattle Opera's Falstaff plays through March 13.