Antonio Salieri: Falstaff
Thanks to Peter Schaffer'sAmadeus, Antonio Salieri has been  immortalized as the mediocre musician who probably poisoned Mozart in a fit of  jealousy over the latter's immense talent. While history has been less than kind  to Salieri, occasional stagings of his operas and recordings of his works show  that this ignorance is not entirely justified. His operaFalstaffis one  of several based on Shakespeare's immortal comic creation, and while not as  memorable as Otto Nicolai'sThe Merry Wives of Windsoror Verdi's  immortalFalstaff, Salieri's version passes its two hours onstage with a  pleasing comic touch.This 1995 performance from the Schwetzinger Festspiele in Germany is proof  positive that Salieri's operas can hold their own onstage. Director Michael  Hampe stages the farce at a brisk but never breakneck pace, and he and his  designers conjure up a plausibly comic world. John de Carlo looks exactly right  as the overbearing knight whose eye for the ladies leads to his comeuppance, and  he sings with brio. Conductor Arnold Östmann and the Radio Symphony Orchestra  Stuttgart play the bright-sounding score with panache. Visually, thisFalstafflooks great, and aurally, the stereo mix is quite good. Since  this is an opera that's rarely recorded, let alone heard, this disc is a must  for fans of 18th-century music.--Kevin Filipski