Metropolitan Opera Archives

All the world was a farce at the Metropolitan Saturday afternoon, in conformity with the burden of the ten-voice fugue which brought to its conclusion the season's first reversion to Verdi's "Falstaff," one of the most brilliant and felicitous of last year's revivals. The matinee representation brought its now familiar triumph for Antonio Scotti as the pinquid amorist, the characterization impressing anew as one of the most adroit and mellow the lyric theater now possesses.

Lawrence Tibbett as the jealous Ford again reached heights of stirring singing and convincing acting in the gripping monologue of the second act, and there was the same notable ensemble as in the performances of last year to carry the music and the comedy forward at the rapid pace exacted by the masterful Tullio Serafin.

Lucrezia Bori's Mistress Ford was again the merriest and prettiest of Windsor's wives, and vocally was no less charming. Frances Aida, Marion Telva and Kathleen Howard (not Henriette Wakefield, as the program stated) coped altogether successfully with some of the trickiest ensemble singing in all opera, in the chattering, laughing badinage of the second scene of the first act.

There were also Armand Tokatyan, happily cast as Fenton, Angelo Bada, Giordano Paltrinieri and Adamo Didur in the gaily farcical parts of Dr. Caius, Bardolph and Pistol, and Louis Burgstaller (still unnamed on the program) as the delightfully droll servant at the Garter Inn.

Notable as the presentation was, there was no moment when it rose above the merits of this uncannily youthful score in which a marvelous craftsman, turning to humor when he had added a decade to the scriptural three-score-and-ten, riddled with laughter those tragic operas of his younger days through which he had built his fame.

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