'Falstaff' executed hilariously

Excepting the premiere of a new work, it is the accepted task of the critic to express his or her view on the performance of a work and not the work itself. But in the case of "Falstaff," Giuseppe Verdi's last opera, this limitation is difficult to abide by, for throughout the opera, it was the sheer buoyancy and brilliance of the music that left a lasting impression.\nThat being the case, the cast deserves every possible amount of credit, for they achieved that so-often-elusive, so-often-ignored goal of serving the music, and not the reverse. Their performance matched the sharpness and intelligence of the score on many levels and provided an excellent conclusion to the IU Opera Theatre's fall semester.\nFrom the very beginning, the stage action in both spirit and deed was well-suited to the levity of the score, played energetically throughout by the IU Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of maestro David Effron.\nThe appropriately rustic set was efficiently designed by faculty member Robert O'Hearn.\nHoward Swyers, as the pleasantly corpulent Sir John Falstaff, plunged immediately into deceitful hilarity by announcing his plans to seduce two different women, Alice Ford and Meg Page, by writing the exact same love letter to each.\nSwyers' energy was apparent, and his eagerness for the role suggests he will continue to find success with it as his voice will certainly continue to mature, allowing his sound to match the physical size, and age of the character.\nUpon discovering the identical nature of their letters, Alice and Meg, sung by Carol Dusdieker and Kate Lindsey, respectively, embark upon a voyage of comic revenge. They are accompanied by Alice's daughter, Nanetta, played adorably by Samantha Malk, and their companion Dame Quickly, whose assertive portrayal by Patricia Thompson neatly rounded this quartet of conniving women with far too much time on their hands.\nLindsey, blessed with natural dramatic flair and comedic sense -- not to mention a lusciously rich mezzo tone -- played an excellent sidekick to Dusdieker. Her full, mature sound gave an appropriate sense of allure and full-grown femininity to the clever mastermind Alice, who arranges a faux-tryst with the arrogant and clueless Falstaff.\nIt is this rendezvous that builds to the true dramatic triumph of the opera. Here the dishonorable knight finds himself hiding from Alice's enraged husband in an unusually large laundry basket emptied from the window into the river below, much to the glee of all present.\nThe scene, complete with little white lies, clandestine love-making and inadvertent tumbles up the stairs, was executed with remarkable precision, though not without some slight stumbling in the interplay between cast and orchestra.\nHaving been ceremoniously dumped into the river and thoroughly chilled to the bone, Falstaff is convinced to attempt another meeting with Alice, this time in the "haunted" Windsor Woods. The forest scene, reminiscent of Shakespeare's magical "A Midsummer Night's Dream," gives Malk her proudest moment.\nHere, dressed as the Fairy Queen, Nanetta sings to a children's chorus of pixies and various and sundry forest creatures, exhorting them to "weave words with pure gold and silver." The aria is arguably the most beautiful, even sublime, moment in the opera, and Malk's performance was truly mesmerizing. \nOnce surrounded by this host of "fairies" and such, Falstaff is hilariously harassed to the point of repentance and finally decries his lifestyle of trickery.\nActing as a foil character to Falstaff is Alice's husband and Nanetta's father, Lord Ford, sung by Soon Young Park. Ford attempts amidst the masquerading in the forest to deceptively perform a wedding ceremony between his daughter and her arranged fiancée, Dr. Caius.\nOnce again, Verdi's quartet of heroines emerges victorious by turning Ford's trickery back on him. \nAs the grand finale to Verdi's great farce, Falstaff leads the company in a choral fugue declaring, in a comic twist of perhaps Shakespeare's most famous quip, "All the world is a jest, and man born a natural jester."\nThat Verdi could manage to muster this amount of humor in the twilight of his life should serve as a lesson to those bogged down in the twilight of the fall semester.