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Two Ways to Tell a Story

Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff concludes with a great choral fugue, a final statement not only about the opera but about life itself. Like other large statements about life made in romance languages, Arrigo Boito’s words do not translate well into English, but the gist is: the whole world’s a joke (‘Tutto nel mondo è burla’), man is born a comic actor, pushed here and there by faith or reason. We’re all dupes. Mortals all laugh at each other, but he laughs best who has the last laugh (‘La risata final’). Everyone on stage joins in, and they’re singing about everybody in the world, including of course the audience. Franco Zeffirelli, when he staged Falstaff at the Metropolitan Opera, wanted at this point to have the scenery whisked away, as the singers whipped off their wigs and pointed, laughing, at the audience. It didn’t happen. But the Canadian Opera Company’s 2004 production ended with an equivalent effect, as on ‘Tutti gabbàti!’ (‘all dupes!’) the house lights went on, Falstaff pointed at the audience, and several singers ran into the auditorium. There is a similar moment at the end of Gogol’s The Government Inspector when the Mayor turns on the audience and asks, ‘What do you think you’re laughing at, eh!? You’re laughing at yourselves, do you know that?’ (105). The final vision is comprehensive, universal: ‘tutto nel mondo è burla.’ The ending of The Merry Wives of Windsor contains a similar note, when Mistress Page issues what sounds like a general invitation: