Verdi: the Falstaff fugue - Spring 2011

Verdi’s last opera may well be his greatest, and Falstaff has received its share of analysis and interpretation from multiple angles, as befits this great magnum opus. This paper will address some details of the overall work, while focusing in greater depth on the fugue[1] at the end of Act III, a topic which receives less attention than others in this opera.

Falstaff, Verdi’s last opera, premiered when the composer was nearly 80 years old. The project had been germinating in his mind for years,
as Verdi is said to have wanted to write a comedy (Busch 1997)[2] and he waited for just the right librettist to fulfill this goal. Arrigo Boito was half Verdi’s age, and had a contrasting personality, but also the qualifications to shape a properly Shakespearean libretto. Verdi and Boito had previously collaborated on Otello, and Boito had experience writing both libretti and opera himself. At this point in Verdi’s career, his style was fluidly expanding and leaving the bel canto recitative-and-aria operas of his youth farther and farther behind. Verdi was more ready than ever to collaborate with Shakespeare to create a superb drama.
Writing an opera like Falstaff so late in his career allowed Verdi greater artistic freedom in the setting of Shakespeare’s plays. Falstaff was not written to a commission, and Verdi had relative leisure to sift through the texts (in translation) and create a libretto and style for the good folk of Windsor. Shakespeare was one of the composer’s favorite poets and the challenges and pleasures of bringing his words to the Italian opera stage had lured Verdi twice before: Otello, as mentioned, came late, his first collaboration with Boito; Macbeth was the first, written by a much younger Verdi for a different public, and most importantly, in collaboration with a very different librettist, Francesco Piave. Verdi revised Macbeth in his middle period and although it has a very different provenance than the latter Shakespeare operas, Macbeth is an interesting sampling of both the composer’s maturing style and his long-term relationship with the Bard of Avon.

Several challenges present themselves for Verdi’s setting of Falstaff. The most obvious is the language barrier between Verdi and his source; Verdi was not fluent in English, so Shakespeare came to him through the lens of a translator. Another challenge lies in the actual source plays: Verdi’s Falstaff is drawn from three different plays (Henry IV I and II, and the Merry Wives of Windsor) and so the composer and librettist had the task of creating a coherent narrative. The three Shakespearean sources span different locales and different times, and ultimately contribute different Falstaffs to the complete narrative; the character himself is rounded out (no pun intended) when seen through the arc of jovial middle age to the nostalgia of Falstaff’s old age. Additional supporting characters (and some telescoped together for economy) drawn from the other plays also contribute to the full picture of the fat knight and his schemes. Verdi and Boito drew mainly on The Merry Wives of Windsor, but selected speeches from the historical plays to supplement Falstaff’s history, motivations, and character.

Verdi had studied fugue as a young man, and venerated the contrapuntal clarity of expression of Palestrina (Busch 1997). Two of Verdi’s previous works featured fugue: the string quartet (1873), and the Sanctus movement of the Requiem (1874). The string quartet’s size is self-evident: the scherzo movement features the fugue, which is taut and vigorous. The Sanctus, on the other hand, is written for double chorus, four soloists, and full orchestra; it is the largest movement of the Requiem by far, and considerably larger than the Falstaff fugue. Both these works date from the beginning of Verdi’s late period, around the composition of Aida. Fugal writing increases the massive stature of the Sanctus movement, whereas in the string quartet’s scherzo the counterpoint keeps the last movement as tight and scintillating as the others. The use of fugue as a conclusion is perhaps a nod to Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge, though this is not at all of the same scope; Verdi’s sparkling little fugue brings the E-minor quartet out into the E-major sun after about 4 minutes. After Falstaff, Verdi returned once more to fugue for the Laudi alla Vergine Maria, in the 4 Sacred Pieces (published 1898).

Selecting such a historical and strict style to end a very free and innovative work is without doubt intentional, but why would Verdi choose fugue to close Falstaff and send the characters off to dinner? It is possible to create a transparent ensemble texture through other musical techniques in order to display differing opinions among the cast, but here Verdi is setting one text sung by the entire company. Unlike in the Act II finale of The Marriage of Figaro or the ensembles in Barber of Seville, there is no conflict between characters, though there are still distinctions of personality. These distinctions are clearly drawn throughout the opera but seem to disappear when we arrive at the fugue. Each character’s comment on the action, or conflict with self and others, is submerged in the polyphonic expression of a Shakespearean theme, which globalizes the moral as compared to the end of the Merry Wives where the moral extends only to the collected characters (Corse 1987). Clearly Verdi is not using fugue to distinguish between characters, but to unify them: the polyphony here serves to pass the subject from voice to voice, register to register, singers to orchestra, and by this grandiose music, bring a larger than life opera to a satisfying, unified close. A fugue, like Falstaff, is a bit old fashioned and governed by a code both strict and pliable, like the fat knight’s “honor.” As Falstaff provides the “wit which makes others witty,” the fugue serves as a resolution to all the intrigue and motion of the opera and brings everyone, even us, to the table. The characters unite in polyphony to agree on the caprice and humor of life.

A brief summary of the plot of Falstaff can be found in any collection of opera synopses, or an in depth music history text such as Grove’s, but in order to examine the fugue in detail it is necessary to sketch some details of the plots which it resolves. Falstaff, a foolish and fat old knight, seeks new sources of revenue to support his paunch, and tries unsuccessfully to seduce rich men’s wives in the course of his search. Master Ford, the husband we meet in the opera, forms his own jealous rebuttal of this plan, and Ford and his wife collaborate with most of the other characters to good-naturedly rebuff Falstaff and foil his plots. By the end of the opera, the pair of young lovers, Fenton and Nannetta (the Fords’ daughter) have been wed against the previous protests of her father, and all the offenses of Falstaff, petty and otherwise, have been duly prosecuted and punished through the collected effort of his peers. He pays for these offences by his own mortification, both emotional and physical, and nearly loses his jovial cool, but in the end both Ford and Falstaff have found resolution to their various conflicts, and the ensemble (in the Shakespearean source) is enjoined to relax and celebrate over dinner. Here the text of the fugue takes the resolved plot and adds a moral of sorts; here is the text in the original and a translation.



Tutto nel mondo é burla.
L'uom é nato burlone,
La fede in cor gli ciurla,
Gli ciurla la ragione.
Tutti gabbati! Irride
L'un l'altro ogni mortal.
Ma ride ben chi ride
La risata final.







Everything in the world is a jest.

Man is born a jester.

In his mind, his reason

Is wavering always

All mocked! All mortals

Taunt one another,

But he laughs well who has the last laugh.

[Translated by William Weaver]


As with much of Falstaff, Verdi has constructed a (free) fugue which accomplishes traditional goals through innovative means. Like the opera itself, the fugue begins in C major on an off-beat. Beginning the opera in this way sets a tone of perpetual energy and a particular quirkiness, though it is less unusual to begin a fugal subject on a weak beat. The subject[3] of the fugue begins with a triplet figure and a downward leap of a minor 7th, a leap which is compensated by two leaps in contrasting directions, each smaller than the previous. Falstaff himself begins the fugue in the tonic, C, and cadences to G, the dominant; next, the tenor voice (Fenton) enters with a real answer, which cadences back to C. The alto and soprano (Quickly and Alice) follow the same pattern of subject and answer, while the orchestra contributes chords which strengthen the cadence rhythmically and add color to the four voices. After the exposition of the first four voices, the orchestra’s chords disappear, leaving the instruments to double voices as discussed above: the overall result is a highly colored fabric of voices matched with instruments to bring out the “relief” of the musical texture. Now the music enters the development phase, adding more voices and instruments; some of the subject entries do not completely finish, exhibiting the characteristic fragmented and unstable nature of development. This character of the development is further established by freeing the previously fixed doublings of voice and instrument, as discussed at length in the following paragraph. The texture becomes thick at times during the ‘development,’ but also thins down to three voices (orchestra doubling singers) at measure 25. Near the end of the development section (measure 60), the orchestra begins to contribute contrapuntal voices which do not double a singer. The fugue is interrupted at the height of its activity with the words “Tutti gabbati” (all fooled) sung first by Falstaff, and then echoed by the rest of the company; this passage brings the fugue to a swift conclusion.

Verdi was a masterful orchestrator, and the fugue in Falstaff is some of his most colorful work. Verdi chooses to match specific instruments to each singer in the exposition, but this fixed doubling is freed in the development section. In the exposition, the orchestra contributes a chordal texture, but quickly begins to double voices and highlight text with color. Certain instruments are used with the same voice throughout the exposition, but in the development section (mm 13-75) the instrument doublings become fluid and begin to interchange among the voices. Overall, low voices are paired with low instruments – no piccolo/cello duet here for irony – though a certain irony is contributed by doubling Ford with the horn. Fenton, the tenor and certainly not an implied cuckold, is also paired with the horn; here the horn’s other significance, as the symbol of the natural world away from the town or house, comes into play. Fenton has been paired with the horn before in the Sonnet of Act III (Dal labbro il canto estasiato vola), though an unusual horn (corno in La bemol basso, senza chiavi) is used in the aria, and the fugue does not feature this instrument. As with Fenton, music associated with Nannetta in the fugue has also been associated with her elsewhere in the opera. The “bocca baciata” motive features an oboe in most appearances, and Nannetta is most often paired in the fugue with the oboe[4]. Verdi lavished unusual instruments in Falstaff on the lovers especially, though the bells in Windsor Forest and the lute/guitar of Falstaff’s seduction of Alice are also deliberately used in one scene only. The lute/guitar is an ironic pastiche of serenades, and as such highlights the irony of Falstaff and Alice’s “tryst.” The bells of Windsor Forest create a completely unique and isolated sonic space, and set the scene for a truly Shakespearean mixture of “true” and “false” supernatural/natural elements. While the scene itself is a set up by Alice and her cohort to trap Falstaff, the atmosphere of the forest is as believable to us as it must be to poor Falstaff. Some doublings are less “coded” for references to the rest of the opera, instead contributing a more or less unique color combination of voice and instrument which helps to distinguish each doubled voice in the fugue texture. Some voices double other voices, such as Pistola and Falstaff at measure 14; these doublings do not always share the same text, a masterful touch.

Verdi’s characteristic stamp on both the fugue’s small details and large harmonic concepts creates continuity with the entire opera. The predominant rhythmic motive, the triplets of both subject and countersubject, resembles Quickly’s “dalle due alle tre” motive, connecting the fugue to the Falstaff-Ford-Alice “triangle.” Quickly’s “messagiera” role is referenced again at measure 11, where her line “l’uom é nato burlone” (also in triplets) follows the contour of “Il suo marito esce sempre” (Act II scene I; the antecedent phrase to “dalle due alle tre”). C major, the key of the fugue, ends the opera in the same key it began (and also present at other key plot points). E major – a major 3rd away from C (a typical harmonic motion for Verdi) also appears in the fugue, as it did in the C major opening scene of Act I; E is also stressed as a melodic point of arrival in the fugue’s lines. The moto perpetuo set running with the opening of Act I is resumed here, interrupted for a brief moment by Falstaff’s statement “tutti gabbati” (all are fooled).

As befits a comic fugue, laughter is written into the music. This laughter first appears exclusively in the women’s parts, from measure 43 until just before measure 74, when the tenors (chorus, Fenton, and Dr. Caius) join in. Falstaff, and Ford (with the basses) do not laugh until after Falstaff’s solo moment “tutti gabbati” – they are the “last to laugh” of the moral, and therefore as the moral hints, perhaps also those who “laugh best.” This mirrors the division between the sexes in Falstaff: in the first ensemble scene (Act 1, scene 2) the women are first seen laughing and unified, whereas the men fuss and fume in argument among themselves. It is not until this final scene when both Falstaff and Ford realize that they have been duped by the women, and finally come to terms with their conflicts. We are to assume that the family harmony and goodwill which prevails at the end of the opera will succeed, because of the thus far successful intervention of the women of the company. Though they scheme and dissemble (and share an equal, if not greater, share of the responsibility for Falstaff’s mortification), their plots run counter to less benevolent motives (Ford’s jealousy, Falstaff’s greed) and ultimately work for the happiness and balance of the community.






Bibliography

Basini, Laura. "The Plays of Art Are for a Playful Art: History, Puzzles, and Play in Verdi's Falstaff." University of Toronto Quarterly 74, no. 2 (2005): 740-49.

Budden, Julian. The Operas of Verdi. Vol. 3: from Don Carlos to Falstaff. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.

—. Verdi. 3rd. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Busch, Hans. Verdi's Falstaff in Letters and Contemporary Reviews. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

Corse, Sandra. Opera and the uses of language. Cranbury: Associated University Presses, 1987.

Hepokoski, James. Giuseppe Verdi: Falstaff (Cambridge opera handbook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Hutcheon, Linda, and Michael Hutcheon. "Verdi's Last Laugh: Parody as Late Style in Falstaff." University of Toronto Quarterly 74, no. 2 (2005): 750-58.

Phillips-Platz, Mary Jane. Verdi: a biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Rosselli, John. The Life of Verdi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.






[1] For convenience, I have numbered the measures of the fugue, starting on the first bar with text (the 3 bars of introduction are not numbered).


[2] Letter to Gino Monaldi 12/3/1890.


[3] The subject appears in a letter from Giulio Ricordi 9/19/1891, in the key of D and 2/4 meter. Ricordi writes the first 7 notes and asks Verdi if it might be a “good subject” for a fugue. The idea that the subject was not written by Verdi, but rather Ricordi is the greatest surprise I have encountered in my research thus far!


[4] Nannetta’s solo aria “Sul fil d’un soffio etesio” also features an unusual instrument used only in this one scene (the clarone, bass clarinet) lending an exotic flair to the lovers’ music.