There are different characters, and significant differences between the plots. One is a German singspiel with dialogue, the other a through-composed Italian opera. But none of that has prevented Otto Nicolai's The Merry Wives of Windsor from being regularly compared with Verdi's Falstaff and, because the latter is one of opera's masterpieces, from always ending up the loser. In German-speaking countries The Merry Wives just about keeps a toehold in the repertory but elsewhere all that's usually heard of it is the overture.
The staging that has opened this year's Buxton festival shows how unfair that neglect is. The Merry Wives may never be a piece for the mainstream repertory, and its intimate scale would make it wrong for a big London opera house. But it's easy to imagine a regional company doing well with a touring-sized production that takes it for what it is: a comic opera that handles the drama with a light touch, and is full of good tunes.
The text comes from just Shakespeare's play of the same name, without of the material from Henry IV which Verdi's librettist Boito used. That means there's no Mistress Quickly, Pistol or Bardolph in The Merry Wives, though we do get Page and Slender instead, and the focus shifts from Falstaff himself to the Mistresses Ford and Page, and to the Fords' marriage in particular. Falstaff has to extricate himself twice from the Ford house: once in a laundry basket and once disguised as the witch of Brentford. But he is never the larger-than-life hero Verdi makes him; more the means by which Mistress Ford makes her husband realise the folly of his jealousy.
Aidan Lang's Buxton production, sung in very audible English (no need of surtitles here), goes back to Shakespeare for its dialogue, keeps the action moving smartly along and, with period costumes and economical sets by Ashley Martin-Davis, looks elegant too. The cast - James Rutherford as a youthful Falstaff, Helen Williams and Yvonne Howard as the merry wives, Roderick Earle and Mark Richardson their less-than-merry husbands - is a classy one, and with John Graham-Hall the suitably gangling Slender and Gail Pearson a diminutive Anne Page, it has real strength in depth. Andrew Greenwood conducts, giving Nicolai's melodies all the space they need. It's a real revelation.
· Performances tomorrow, Saturday, July 20 and July 23. Box office: 0845 127 2190.
