Mark Elder's music directorship of the Hallé has already evoked comparisons with the orchestra's glory days under John Barbirolli. There were times, during this semi-staged Falstaff, when you almost felt his shadow hovering.
Elder is faultless when it comes to judging both Verdi's opera's seamless, organic flow and the tone that balances laughter and tears in equal measure. There's darkness and humour in his reading, as Ford's jealousy threatens to bring the whole comic edifice crashing down, while sudden, baleful glints in the orchestration evoke the "wicked world" Falstaff curses even as he invites us to laugh at it and forgive its cruelties.
He is helped immeasurably by Ambrogio Maestri's outstanding performance in the title role. A giant of a man, with a voice suggesting contented vitality, he avoids presenting Falstaff as a slob and turns him into a badly behaved, still attractive aristocrat, who revels in his physical immensity while ruefully regrets the passing of the slim young man he was.
Elder surrounds him with an ensemble of great cogency, though a couple of individual performances don't entirely work. Ashley Holland's morose Ford isn't dangerous enough when roused, while Felicity Palmer's sour-voiced Quickly sounds embittered rather than sexual. On the plus side, however, are Susan Chilcott's self-assured, supremely sensual Alice and Alice Coote's dithering, morally outraged Meg. As Nannetta and Fenton, Camilla Tilling and Charles Castronovo are both glorious.
Director Susannah Waters struggles a bit when it comes to Falstaff's ducking in the Thames, though elsewhere she ingeniously turns the whole of the Bridgewater Hall into a performing space. Characters eavesdrop from seats in the orchestra. Ford's manhunt invades the stalls, and Elder himself is the Landlord of the Garter Inn, unfurling Falstaff's unpaid bills from the pages of his score. Taken as a whole, this is the best Falstaff I've heard in years. One only hopes that the Hallé is recording it for its new CD label, and so preserving it for posterity.
