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Tutti gabbati? – “Falstaff” at Salzburg Festival 2023

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Mixed audience reaction, with both “boos” for the staging and conductor and “bravi” in appreciation of the singers.

By Oxana Arkaeva

Visited performance on August 26th, 2023

En español

View from Mirabelle gardens on Salzburg Castle. Foto author.

Salzburg – the historic Austrian city, is located in the picturesque surroundings and is renowned for its stunning architecture, rich cultural heritage, and as the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The Salzburg Festival is one of the most prestigious and renowned music and performing arts festivals in the world. It takes place annually from July to the August for five to six weeks and is distinguished for its exceptional presentations of the innovative opera productions, classical music concerts, theater performances, as well as famous free open air opera public viewing in the Salzburg Cathedral Square in cooperation with Siemens Salzburg, ORF Salzburg and Unitel. While the festival encompasses various genres, opera has always held a central role in its programming. Its opera productions are often elaborate and feature internationally renowned singers, conductors, directors, and stage designers.

The festival was founded in 1920 by a group of prominent figures in the arts, literature, music, and theatre including composer Richard Strauss, playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal, conductor Franz Schalk, and theatre regisseur Max Reinhardt. The goal was to revitalize the cultural life of post-World War I Austria. This fact from the festival’s history presents a special programming highlight of the current seasons. Guests are invited to experience a virtual tour through the scenery of the first Salzburg production of “Faust” staged by Max Reinhardt in 1933. After the short but informative tour by a member of the stuff guests are offered the VR-Glasses to experience a very poetic walk through the so called Fauststadt (Faust city).  

This virtual recreation at its original location brings to live Clemens Holzmeister’s unique stage design and explains how Reinhardt discovered the Felsenreitschule for the theater and realized his last major Salzburg production. The idea was to bring Salzburg on the stage of the Felsenreitschule. Holzmeister built the entire town with sets constructed next to and on top of each other which allowed the whole play to be performed without set changes. With eight tours per day festivals visitors have an exceptional opportunity not only to experience a virtual scenery, but also to listen to the recording of the first Gretchen (Paula Wessely) and waich video footage of stage action taken by some American general after the WW II.

Premiered at La Scala in Milan in 1893, the opera plot of “Falstaff” is based on Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor” and is enriched with scenes from “Henry IV.” Sir John Falstaff, whom the librettist Arrigo Boito portrays as a relic of a bygone era and refuses to give up on his love passion and dreams of love, is a center figure of this comedy drama.

The Swiss stage director Christoph Marthaler took over the Rheinhard idea of multiple design sets on stage. His “Falstaff” brings a film set to the enormous stage of the Great Festival Hall, which shows a cinema to the left, outdoor film studio in the middle and the obligatory pub with swimming pool to the right.

Marthaler’s production refers to the film shootings of the Falstaff story with Orson Welles. American actor, director, and author, who made a film version of Shakespeare’s Falstaff scenes in 1965, acts as a mute regisseur-extra throughout the evening. We experience a turbulent film-set life with business as usual. “The film team is busy with cameras, but in reality, nothing is being recorded,” says stage designer Anna Viebrock. “You don’t always know: is that part of the plot, or is it just a rehearsal?”

A truly universal artist, Marthaler is famous for the creating his very own sleepwalking like stage universe full of simultaneous, hectic actions, multiple stage designs, sixties costumes (Anna Viebrock), hidden historical and content-related information as well as occasional slapsticks. Thus, in his early staging recognizable, original, and at times funny, in this production this uniqueness is an overdue and tiring one. The extreme chaos seems to be out of control. The quote from Hamlet: “The time has gotten out of hand” – the motto of this summer’s Salzburg Festival seems to have found its full realization in this production. The lack of distinguished characters portrayal, their listlessness, energy, temperament as well as of romance combined with tedious boredom are the outstanding characteristics of this production. 

In harmony with the director’s concept plays the Vienna Philharmonic under the button of Ingo Metzmacher, often reduced to the role of pure accompanist. With the only highlight in the final fugue, the orchestra presented mostly a homogenous but energy-less sound lacking the richness and dynamics of Verdi’s score. Difficult acoustics of to all sides open stage made the coordination between stage and orchestra pit a challenging one.

Gerald Finley in Falstaff, Salzburg Festval 2023

The ensemble of singers consistently presented excellent vocal performances. However, the lack of passion and energy in and the general bleakness of the staging seemed to restrain them from fully showcasing their singing abilities. Baritone Gerald Finley’s singing was beautiful, but his portrayal of Falstaff felt weak and dull, often appearing rigid with his hands in his pockets. Baritone Simon Keenlyside delivered a beautiful performance, but he seemed to struggle in his efforts to bring his character to life.

Falstaff, Merry Wives of Windsor, Salzburg 2023

Mezzo-soprano Tanja Ariane Baumgartner, portraying Mrs. Quickly, and soprano Elena Stikhina as Alice, both accomplished singers, appeared to face challenges in aligning with the director’s vision, resulting in pale performances devoid of energy. In contrast, young soprano Giulia Semenzato, portraying Nanetta with her charming lyric soprano, and tenor as Fenton, possessing a remarkably beautiful lyric tenor, stood out as vocal highlights of the evening. Mezzo-soprano Cecilia Molinari sang with a full and rich mezzo voice, and was the sole performer who managed to infuse some sense of enjoyment and vitality into the evening.

As the performance reached its conclusion, the silent director-extra, Orson Welles, unexpectedly sang with a shaky voice, posing the question, “tutti gabbati?”—”are all (of us) being fooled?” This poignant inquiry led the audience to reflect on the evening and ponder the same query. The mixture of “boos” directed at the staging and conductor, as well as “bravi” in appreciation of the singers, rounded up this challenging opera evening at the Salzburg Festival 2023.

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