opera notebook
some operas I have seen on videoOtto Nicolai, Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (1849)
libretto by Salomon Hermann Mosenthal
Opéra Royal de Wallonie, Liège, 2015
- Conductor: Christian Zacharias
- Director: David Hermann
- Set Designer: Rifail Ajdarpasic
- Frau Fluth: Anneke Luyten
- Frau Reich: Sabina Willeit
- Falstaff: Franz Hawlata
David Hermann's modern-dress Lustigen Weiber adds a very 20th-century touch: the various characters in the farce are all in therapy. When they deliver soliloquy arias, they are joined by a psychoanalyst who talks over their problems with them, in dialogue (sometimes in French) written for this production.
The Merry Wives of Windsor is familiar enough, I guess, for this conceit to work. But Nicolai's opera is not very frequently performed, so encountering it in this weird adaptation necessitates a lot of figuring out what is going on in the opera (plus how the opera adapts Shakespeare) while reading it through the interpolated material.