Falstaff

The crowning achievement of Giuseppe Verdi’s 55-year career in the theater, Falstaff is the Italian composer’s 26th opera but only his second comedy. In bringing Shakespeare’s rapacious Sir John Falstaff—a character found in the Bard’s The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry IV, parts I and II—to the operatic stage, Verdi created one of the art form’s greatest comic characters, and in this performance from the 2018–19 season, baritone Ambrogio Maestri delivers a memorable performance as the larger-than-life knight. In his Met debut run, conductor Richard Farnes leads a world-class ensemble of artists, including Ailyn Pérez and Juan-Jesús Rodriguez as the Fords, Golda Schultz and Francesco Demuro as the smitten young couple Nannetta and Fenton, and Marie-Nicole Lemieux as the scheming Mistress Quickly.