The news that 77-year-old Renato Bruson will sing the title role in Verdi’s Falstaff in Busseto this October has come as a great relief in the composer’s hometown. When I visited in April to find out about plans for the 200th anniversary of Giuseppe Verdi’s birth, the people of this quiet La Bassa township were grim-faced.

‘We were expecting so many things in 2013,’ one member of the Amici di Verdi told me. ‘But the economic situation has been so bad that at the moment nothing is planned for October.’

Busseto has a long history of commemorating the man they called their ‘Swan’. In 1868, to honour the composer of Nabucco, Rigoletto, and La traviata, the people of Busseto not only renamed their theatre after Verdi, they tore it apart and rebuilt it in a much more opulent style with a royal box, smoking room, and ridotto (private salon) where sopranos could serenade affluent gentlemen in private. Mythological scenes were painted on the ceiling of the auditorium with a cherub holding up the word ‘VERDI’ to the Muse of Music. The composer was said to have been furious when he heard that the building where he had first heard opera was being destroyed in his name, but in the end he gave money to help complete the project.

In 1913, to celebrate the centenary of Verdi’s birth, Toscanini conducted Falstaff and La traviata here in this lovely, delicate red and white theatre. And in 2001 Franco Zeffirelli staged an Aida to honour the centenary of Verdi’s death. It was a production that is still talked about in Busseto because of the way Zeffirelli managed to transcend the restrictions of such a small stage.

Given Zeffirelli’s triumph, much was expected of the Big 200 in October 2013 but until recently no plans had materialised beyond a Wagner-Verdi symposium. Compared to the money lavished on Richard Wagner’s birthday in Leipzig not to mention Bayreuth – and even Milan – it did seem a terrible prospect that no Verdi opera was due to be performed in the town of his birth.*

Fortunately Teatro Regio di Parma stepped in to fill the breach with a production of Falstaff co-directed by – and starring for its first two performances - the legendary Verdi interpreter Renato Bruson, the man of whom Carlo Maria Giulini said: ‘I believe Renato Bruson now is The Falstaff. He has the wit, the intelligence, the dignity and, of course, the voice. Basta.’

Falstaff at Teatro Giuseppe Verdi di Busseto is being performed on October 12 and 17 with Renato Bruson and October 19, 24 and 26 with Piero Terranova.
teatroregioparma.org
 
* Verdi was technically born outside the city walls at a small village now known as Roncole Verdi