Looking back on Los Angeles Opera’s opening night performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff, words like frolicsome, joyous, and harmonious come to mind — along with Puck’s aside from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, “What fools these mortals be!”
The night was also a memento of Music Director James Conlon’s 20 years of work at the company. As he took the podium on Saturday, April 18, for his penultimate production, he received a celebrity’s reception.
During his preshow lecture (a trademark of his tenure), Conlon emphasized his lifelong love of Falstaff and the decision to conduct it as one of his two final operas — he will conduct Mozart’s The Magic Flute beginning on May 30. After that, he will assume the title of LA Opera’s Conductor Laureate.
Having witnessed many of James Conlon’s LA Opera performances over the years, I cannot recall ever seeing him have as much fun as he had Saturday. Can a conductor have an ongoing love affair with an opera? It appears so.
From its bustling opening scene at the Garter Inn to its bucolic fairy-flitting finale, the conductor guided a performance that combined high energy and pinpoint precision with a core of emotional clarity that ebbed and flowed as gracefully as the River Thames.
Making his fourth appearance in the title role, bass-baritone Craig Colclough is a Sir John to be reckoned with, vocally and dramatically. He is a self-inflated, pompous buffoon and a hearty comrade in arms with a flagon of sack in one hand and a lusty lady in the other — a man of immense girth who is convinced his staff will never fall. In the end, he is a lovable scoundrel who gets his comeuppance and a much-needed puncturing of his vanity.
Whoever plays Falstaff literally makes a production sink or swim. Colclough’s performance has it all. He is funny and also brings a tear to the eye when his world comes crashing down.
The wives are led superbly by the lush soprano of Nicole Heaston as Alice Ford and the warm-toned mezzo-soprano of Sarah Saturnino as a bespectacled Meg Page. Their confederate, Mistress Quickly, is sung confidently by mezzo-soprano Hyona Kim, but without really immersing herself in the comic possibilities and cultural complexities the character offers.
The less-than-merry men are led by the forceful baritone of Ernesto Petti as the choleric Ford. Nathan Bowles is robustly befuddled as Dr. Caius. Falstaff’s unsavory drinking buddies, Pistol and Bardolph, are played for laughs by Vinícius Costa and Yuntong Han.
Fenton and Nannetta, the two lovers who blithely glide through the machinations of the plot, are sung by Anthony León, who has a perfectly bright Italianate tenor, and soprano Deanna Breiwick, whose high notes and vibrato on Saturday were more than a tad shaky. Shawna Lucey directs her cast with the gusto of a Shakespearean sitcom. There is plenty of broad, good-natured humor and frivolity.
The Old Globe look of the production and its rich Elizabethan period costumes are by Adrian Linford. His costuming, however, for the final forest scene with Nannetta, as the Fairy Queen, in a shimmering gown that flutters like a white multi-winged moth, felt a little out of place.
Continuing the celebration of Conlon’s reign as music director, a farewell concert will take place on the Dorothy Chandler stage on Friday, April 24. That night, Conlon will finally get to indulge in scenes from the one Wagner opera the company has never staged, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
