University of California Berkeley - Blue and Gold Yearbook (Berkeley, CA)

Falstaff Verdi ' s Falstaff was presented to Berkeley audiences in October by the San Francisco Opera Association. Sponsored by the Committee on Arts and Lectures, this comic opera, after Shakespeare ' s The Merry Wives of Windsor, was Verdi ' s comedy masterpiece and his last piece of work. Free of trite tunes, and typical opera tenors, Falstaff shows humor into music. Two mature masters, Verdi and Boito, Elizabethan comedy-drama and Italian opera in a marriage. Falstaff is the story of the sly tippler wooing Mrs. Alice Ford. His resulting antics on the stage are characterized by deft humor and true slapstick. Geraint Evans played the obese roue ' and Mary Costra portrayed the much sought-after Mrs. Ford. The simple staging, with curtainless Elizabethan style, the audiences, as did the pater-songs, light-hearted and superb acting throughout, minimizing any Italian-English language barrier which might have existed.