"Dance! Sing! 7 minutes at the Paris Opera" offers original incursions into the season thanks to broadcasts produced by France Musique and the Paris Opera. For each opera or ballet production, Judith Chaine (opera) and Stéphane Grant (dance), present the works and artists you are going to discover when you attend performances in our theatres.

Created in 1999, Dominique Pitoiset's production of Falstaff is now celebrating its coming of age. Bursting with life, it is making a comeback at the Opéra Bastille, with Bryn Terfel in the title role. An occasion for the director to cast a fatherly eye on his now grown-up child.

I first got to know Falstaff through Shakespeare. At the time of this production's creation, I'd had some major successes in the theatre with Love's Labour's Lost, The Tempest and Macbeth. I had come out of the German school, and had been assistant to Karge and Langhoff, then Giorgio Strehler, who himself had been Bertolt Brecht's assistant. So my approach to Verdi came about via a post-Brechtian, "tangible" theatre. We thought about the mediation of objects, how to increase the focal points of the interaction between the singers. This worked rather well with Verdi because with him, the movements are "musicalised" – dictated by the musical writing.

I had taken it on with the conviction that we shouldn't do anything too contemporary with it, while being aware that an Elizabethan aesthetic wouldn't dialogue at all well with Verdi's music. I thought it would be interesting to exploit the discrepancies by creating a world on stage that was visually closer to Verdi than Shakespeare. It's a production from the previous century, with an aesthetic that's a very far cry from my current projects. My standpoint would be different if I had to stage the work again. However, looking at the staging, I find it has a lot of charm, and I've immersed myself in it again just as you'd enjoy rediscovering an old comic book tucked away on a shelf.
This staging is full of the ghosts of those who have inhabited it – and there are a lot of them. At the opera, the history of revivals is full of memories and the human element. If a production works and carries on for years, it's thanks to the community of artists and technical teams who keep the whole idea alive. This is something we don't see as stage directors. Once the first night is over, we generally turn the page, ease off the pressure and move onto something else.

Changes always depend on the new singers' relationship with their roles, what their interpretation allows and the way they move. With time, I have learned to observe them. Then I can make adjustments and guide them along paths where they can develop. If you look at past revivals of this production, there have been some very different Falstaffs and Alices, for example. You have to factor in the artists' singularities and requirements. Opera is a world where, with very short rehearsal times, people are putting their reputations on the line, and it's pretty scary. With the passing years and each new project, my own fears have gradually subsided, and I now take great pleasure in helping performers confront their anxieties more calmly.

When I look back at this production, I think about the film by Orson Welles, and that brilliant scene, played with incredible finesse, when the young king ascends the throne. Falstaff, who knows him well, is in the crowd and shouts out to him, trying to attract his attention. But the king pretends not to see him, and magisterially disowns him. That scene alone encapsulates Falstaff: a buffoon for whom the whole world is just a joke – and that aspect is what deeply touched the maestro Verdi, I feel.

Yannick Haenel: It was an exhilarating whirlwind. This is an opera in which all the characters, men and women alike, waltz around the unfathomable character of Falstaff. I came away under the spell. What fascinates me is Falstaff’s loss of control, how he loses his grip on events even when he remains at the centre of the work. How does one sing loss of control? That’s the first question I’d like to ask Bryn.

Bryn Terfel: The question of loss of control, of chaos, is interesting because it lies at the heart of this work. The libretto of Falstaff, as we know, is a composite text constructed from the amalgamation of two Shakespearean texts: Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor. At the first production of Falstaff that I took part in – I was singing the role of Ford – Peter Stein, the director, had put together a sort of Bible in which he had noted down the source of each phrase of the libretto.

Yannick Haenel: For my part, I see the character of Falstaff as a vehicle for the tragedy that governs the relationships around him – the baseness of the lackeys, the jealousy of the men, the cruelty of the women, the collective meanness of the community. I have the urge to play devil’s advocate and find Falstaff likeable. Because in my eyes he’s a victim, like Dostoevsky’s hero in “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”, who believes he is bringing the truth to the inhabitants of a far-off planet when in fact he brings only despair…

Bryn Terfel: My vision of Falstaff is slightly less sombre. I imagine Verdi at the age of 80, retired to his property in Milan, writing a comedy after spending a lifetime writing tragedies. What he said the day after the premier of Otello comes to mind: “Having massacred so many heroes and heroines, I certainly have the right to laugh a little.” In Falstaff, beyond the farce, beyond the darkness, beyond the sadness, all the characters seem to draw some profit from their experiences: Alice has doubtless never known a man who speaks to her as Falstaff speaks to her in his letters; Ford learns to his cost that he could be outwitted, even in his own home by a man as conceited and disgusting as Falstaff. As for the two lovers, who are the beating heart of the village, their love triumphs in the end. During the final fugue, which is a musical masterpiece, all the voices respond to each other: the community has, in a way, remained intact. When listening to this music, I can’t help seeing a sort of happy ending. And then Sir John Falstaff doesn’t come out of it so badly…

Yannick Haenel: You’re right to draw a parallel between Falstaff’s letters and the relationship between Nannetta and Fenton. In this opera, there are two amorous discourses: one that appears genuine, the other excessive and clumsy, but in which there is just as much love. The scene in which Alice receives the letter from Falstaff is suffused with melancholy, because although the letter has been written by a buffoon, it is no less beautiful. This buffoon knows how to speak of love, even if all is falsehood. What is really cruel and dark in this piece is that Falstaff’s love is not recognised as such. He is not taken seriously. Everyone prefers to laugh at him. The chorus may well sing: “Everything in this world is a farce”, these words are not enough to disperse the melancholy that wells up at the loss of love. It’s interesting because I happen to know that the role of Don Giovanni is in your repertoire, you have performed it on this very stage, at the Opéra Bastille. Now, I have the impression that Falstaff is a failed Don Giovanni: he’s living in a Mozart opera whereas the good people of Windsor live in a bourgeois novel.

Bryn Terfel: I also sense that dark melancholy at work in Falstaff. And at the same time there is this tremendous energy: the opera seems to be saying that, whatever happens, life goes on. When he gets thrown into the Thames – with the fish and the rubbish – Falstaff has only to enter a tavern and “pour a little wine into the Thames water” to

Bryn Terfel: It’s important to remember that one of the last interpreters of the role of Falstaff in this production by Dominique Pitoiset was Ambrogio Maestri. Now, Ambrogio Maestri didn’t just play Falstaff, he WAS Falstaff. He is one of those performers who brand the role with a hot iron. I spent a lot of time watching his videos, I was fascinated by the way he moved, the time he took to go from one side of the stage to the other. I must admit that, in slipping into the role of Falstaff, I also slipped into Ambrogio Maestri’s shoes. I have therefore become an abdomen within an abdomen with my own abdomen. As a performer, it’s always complicated to know what comes from me and what belongs to my character. For example, for this production of Falstaff, it’s the first time I’ve performed with my own hair. It’s unprecedented, remarkable! Is this belly mine or Falstaff’s? Perhaps I am myself turning into Falstaff in my old age…[laughter] But it’s clear that Verdi rejoices in the belly of his hero. The women all see that he’s a mountain of lard. And yet, when I put on my false belly and walk around the corridors at Bastille, I feel as if all eyes are drawn to it like a magnet. One must add that opera has traditionally been an area in which corpulence has been seen as something fascinating. Look at Luciano Pavarotti: he had the world at his feet.

Yannick Haenel: Falstaff’s belly is his throne, his sovereignty. Like Henry IV, Verdi’s opera is notable in that the Fool has more vitality than the King. Indeed, I would like to move from the matter of his abdomen to that of excess and transgression. Recently, the international press was shocked by the Weinstein affair, the American producer accused of sexually harassing numerous actresses. The affair created a tidal wave and set off reactions from other women who spoke out all over the world about having been victims of harassment, and sometimes to denounce their aggressor. I was wondering if you were aware, when singing this role today, of the very particular resonance that the character’s excessive and ultimately chastened libido might have with current affairs.

Bryn Terfel: If you’re venturing into this terrain, in effect, what happens to Falstaff is reminiscent of what is going on in the news, except that he is immediately villified in public, whereas the Weinstein affair has taken twenty odd years to come to light. As to whether I think about it when I’m on stage … In the case of Falstaff, maybe he plays on his noble rank. Maybe he feels authorised by his status to go beyond his rights, to flout the limits.

Yannick Haenel: Certainly, the story contains a parallel layer of social conflict, because Falstaff is a nobleman, an aristocrat who has the extravagant reflexes of a ridiculous lord of the manor. He is the village scapegoat, someone who gets punished for their excesses. At the ceremony in the third act, the women pronounce this phrase: “Lord, make him chaste!”

Bryn Terfel: Yes: “Domine fallo casto!”

Yannick Haenel: Which therefore makes it a symbolic castration. More than just vengeance, it’s also a matter of initiating the excessive Falstaff to the customs of Bourgeois society in which sex must be kept within limits.

Yannick Haenel: Yes, and I would add that in Falstaff there is another element that resonates with that legend: for me, Verdi’s hero is a philosophical being because he undergoes an initiation rite. He believes himself to be a master and a predator and at the ceremony, a ritual which calls upon very ancient symbols, he discovers that he is himself prey. At bottom, Falstaff is also a king: a king capable of laughing at his crown. He goes along with this parody of sovereignty. In the opera, he compares himself with Acteon, the nephew of Dionysos, the god of wine in Greek mythology. There are mythological undercurrents throughout this opera. Falstaff is not merely a ridiculous, vain buffoon, he is also an ancestral being who roars with laughter at the memory of his ancient identity.

Bryn Terfel: In the third act there is that moment when Falstaff invokes the aid of the gods:

Numi, proteggetemi! Giove! Tu per amor d’Europa ti trasformasti in bove; Portasti corna

Ye gods, protect me! Jupiter! For love of Europa, you changed yourself into a bull; you wore horns.

But the gods remain deaf to his pleas. The opera presents this myth and then sweeps it aside. The gods look the other way.

Yannick Haenel: Of all Shakespeare’s characters, Falstaff has the particularity of being a drunken hero. But far from diminishing him, his drunkenness makes him greater. On seeing this performance of Falstaff, and on seeing the Orson Welles film again, two things struck me. The first is that drunkenness is linked to the art of poetry. The perturbation of the senses can be seen, not as a flaw, but as an asset. The second is that alcohol also plays a role in sacred ritual. In all ceremonies, there are libations. I asked you earlier how one could sing chaos. I’d like to ask you the same question now about inebriation.

Bryn Terfel: I’ll let you in on a secret: the swig of alcohol that I drink on stage in the third act is real: it’s spiced mulled wine. At that point in the performance I need to feel that hot, spicy wine in my throat washing away the Thames water. I like to think that it lights up a sparkle of pleasure in my eyes that the audience can see. It’s true that alcohol is a part of ceremonies and rituals and therefore, in a certain fashion, theatre. There have been some great drinkers who were also great actors, by the way. In opera, it’s more complicated … [laughter]

Yannick Haenel: Alcohol is also what separates Falstaff and his exuberance from those sensible bourgeois citizens who only drink water.

Bryn Terfel: Do you really think they only drink water?

Yannick Terfel: That’s what it says in the opera, anyway.

Bryn Terfel: Going back to your novel, I didn’t grasp whether the hero was a beggar or a king…

Yannick Haenel: He’s both a beggar and a king.

Bryn Terfel: I see…

Bryn Terfel: Yes, I really love this poet. In effect, he had a sad life. He spent his days drinking in the pubs in Newquay, on the southern Welsh coast. I imagine that’s where most of the characters in his play Under Milk Wood were born. Some of his verse is strongly present in my mind, in the morning, when I wake up. I’ve often been advised to make a list of my favourite poets, in case a composer ever wanted to write something for me. But to me, there’s something intimidating about Dylan Thomas. He gives me the same impression as certain works by Schubert. I need to be familiar with his texts and work on them for a long time before I can really appreciate them.   

Interviewed by Simon Hatab