"The sheer visceral
wallop and power of opera in an intimate production." 184 East 76th Street New York, NY 10021 (212) 288-9438 e-mail Dicapo Michael Capasso General Director Diane Martindale Artistic Director 
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IN REVIEW NEW YORK CITY – Falstaff, Dicapo Opera Theater, 10/15/04 January 2005 , vol 69 , no.7 If Dicapo Opera Theater left anyone in the audience unamused by its recent Falstaff, it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying. Michael Capasso’s production (seen on October 15) set the opera as a romp in 1950s Brooklyn. Sir John became a two-bit wiseguy, and the Garter Inn, a pizzeria. When Falstaff emerged from the Thames (here the East River), he stripped down to a burlesque clown’s red-dotted boxer shorts. Fenton was a horny greaser; Quickly was a tough-skinned Mafia widow; Nanetta wore a poodle skirt. The Fords were recast as Ralph and Alice Kramden, with Meg Page as Trixie, and a mute, mugging “Mr. Page,” upstaging the singers during ensembles, giving the show an Ed Norton. The insistence on pop-culture high spirits extended to intermission, which became the occasion for a doo-wop serenade in the lobby. Capasso seemed to be sending the message that Verdi’s opera is as accessible and gag-filled as The Honeymooners. It simply isn’t: it’s deeper and more difficult than a sitcom. Even at its most frenzied, Falstaff succeeds because of its humanity as much as its hilarity. The production completely missed the undercurrent of pathos that accompanies the fat knight on his travails – the evening had nothing Shakespearean about it. Nor did it really succeed as boffo entertainment. Slam-bang comedy was out of the range of much of the cast, and it seemed especially unfair to expect Richard Byrne (Ford), small-scale in voice and manner, to evoke the outsize comic persona of Jackie Gleason. (A point that gnawed on me all evening: the chronically improvident Ralph Kramden seemed an odd fit for Verdi and Boito’s “gran borghese.”) David Malis, a veteran of the Met and San Francisco Opera, brought a sure sense of Verdi style, crisp diction and an appropriately “fat” sound to the title role. He is not a natural comedian: he failed to project the knight’s grotesque self-assurance, and his eyes lacked mirth. John Bernard’s clear, strong tenor transcended the coarse stage business assigned to Fenton. The cracker-jack comic timing of Melissa Parks (Quickly) brought some of the evening’s few true laughs. If only her singing had been as deft as her physical performance: She spread her admirably gutsy sound out in a thick paste, missing opportunities to use the Italian text to shape phrases. In fact, the singing was too loud everywhere. One might have anticipated the 204-seat theater would have given the cast the opportunity to deliver the opera with conversational intimacy, but instead they sang as if trying to project to Family Circle at the Met. Tempos were slow all evening. This no doubt let conductor Pacien Mazzagetti maintain ensemble among his inexpert forces, but it made for a distinctly earthbound Falstaff. . FRED COHN |
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