Verdi - Falstaff - Karajan Sheet Music Score + 2CD in MP3 -1957 MakeGreatMusic.Net

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What can be said about Verdi and his Operas?? What really needs to be said? If you haven't heard them, then it is an aural feast for the ears! If you have heard them, then listening again is like the feeling of returning home after a long absence, like seeing a warm summer sunrise. I hope this recording will bring you the joy it has brought to me. Sheets included of course.

Format: MP3 and PDF
Historical Recording digitally enhanced from 1957

Description of the opera: Giuseppe Verdi - Falstaff

Opera in three acts; libretto by Arrigo Boito based on the play The Merry Wives of Windsor and the historical drama Henry IV by William Shakespeare
First performance: Milan, La Scala, 9th February 1893.

Characters
Sir John Falstaff (baritone)
Bardolfo and Pistola, Falstaff's companions
Ford (baritone), Alice's husband (soprano)
Nannetta, Alice's daughter (soprano)
Mrs. Quickly and Mrs. Meg Page, Alice's friends (mezzo-sopranos)
Doctor Caius (tenor)
Fenton, in love with Nannetta (tenor)
Robin, Falstaff's page boy (mute)

The action takes place in Windsor in the reign of Henry IV, between 1399 and 1413.

ACT ONE
At the Garter Inn, Falstaff is sitting at a table where he is finishing writing two love letters.A furious Doctor Caius bursts in and inveighs against the knight and his two servants Bardolfo and Pistola, accusing them of having made him drink and then robbing him.
The two indignant servants protest their innocence, but Falstaff does not even deign to respond. He is too preoccupied with thinking up a ploy to fill his now empty purse.
The two letters, perfectly identical, have been written especially to seduce two rich Windsor ladies, Alice Ford and Meg Page. Falstaff finishes writing, rereads his letters with a satisfied smile and orders Bardolfo and Pistola to deliver them. His two servants, however, refuse point blank, claiming that after all they too have their dignity to preserve.Falstaff angrily explains his own concept of honour as he drives them out with a broom. A page boy will deliver the letters for him. In the garden of Ford's house, Alice Ford and her daughter Nannetta meet Meg Page and Quickly. The third friend is older but no less quick-witted.
Two minutes' chat is all they need and the news of the day is on all their tongues. Amused, though a little offended, the three ladies compare the two letters they have received.They move from giggles to a plan of action: Falstaff's impudence calls for punishment.Doctor Caius and Fenton now appear (the former, Nannetta's long-suffering suitor, the second her secret lover). Next come Bardolfo and Pistola, still seething over their dismissal and sworn to be avenged. Falstaff deserves to be unmasked: they will reveal to Ford Falstaff's plan to seduce his wife and to get his hands on his money.
They two groups of men avoid each other studiedly.
Meanwhile the ladies have prepared their plan: Quickly, disguised as a slut, will pay a call on Falstaff to fix him a rendezvous with Alice and Meg and thus draw him into the trap.The ladies bid each other farewell, agree to meet again the next day and move off looking forward to the fun they will have at Falstaff's expense.

ACT TWO
Bardolfo and Pistola go back to the Garter Inn to pretend to ask Falstaff's forgiveness and to find a way to make him meet Ford.
Mrs Quickly comes in with a message for the knight: taking advantage of her husband's absence, Alice Ford will meet him at her house that afternoon between two and three o'clock.The fat knight swells with pride as he boasts to all of his skill as a ladies' man.The plots against Falstaff thicken. As soon as Mrs Quickly has gone out a wealthy, well-dressed gentleman, who gives his name as Fontana, appears. The mysterious character is none other than Ford himself: he tells Falstaff that he has fallen in love with a beautiful woman called Alice and has courted her without success since the lady, faithful to her husband, refuses him. He asks Falstaff to give him a hand. If Falstaff, who is known to be a man of the world, succeeds in opening a breach in Alice's heart, he says, then it will be so much easier for him to follow.Falstaff is taken in: he rises to the challenge and boastfully tells the man that he has already obtained a rendezvous with the lady. Then he leaves to get ready. Hearing this Ford is stunned and caught up in his jealousy now decides to follow the knight.
Meanwhile the wives are busily preparing their trap at Ford's house.
Falstaff appears for his rendezvous with Alice, immediately making a display of his talent as a seducer.Shortly afterwards Ford comes back with a group of friends and starts searching the house.The knight, behind a screen in the bedroom tries to hide in the linen basket and has no small difficulty in squeezing his fat self into the basket.
Taking advantage of the confusion, Nannetta and Fenton slip behind the screen and start kissing and cuddling.
Ford comes in and hears the muffled sighs; in a fit of rage he overturns the screen and thus discovers the two young lovers.
The ladies, meanwhile, are immensely amused; they lift up the basket with Falstaff in it and throw everything out of the window.

ACT THREE
There is more to come. The next day Mrs Quickly, again acting as a messenger, goes to the Garter Inn to see poor Falstaff who is trying to pull himself together again with the help of some good wine.She brings him a second invitation from Alice, who now asks him to meet her at Herne's oak dressed as a black hunter. Tradition has it that the spirits and fairies of the forest meet at

Herne's oak at night.
Once again Falstaff rises to the bait, but this time all the inhabitants of Windsor take part in the trick. Word is passed that there will be a great masked ball in which Nannetta will be the Fairy Queen.On the stroke of midnight, Falstaff presents himself at the oak tree and finds Alice waiting for him. The fiery expression of Falstaff's passion is now interrupted by the arrival of the fairies.They all rush forward: they tease, poke and pinch poor Falstaff who covers his ears and rolls on the ground, until he recognises his servant Bardolfo behind one of the masks.A moment's bewilderment is followed by a resounding laugh.In the general merriment Alice presents to the assembly two pairs of brides and grooms, whom Ford blesses. When the masks are taken away the gentleman sees that he has married Doctor Caius to Bardolfo and Fenton to Nannetta.
Women and love have won the day; Falstaff concludes the celebration with a chorus of joy:

"Everything in the world is jest."