A Disappointing Afternoon with Pocket Opera

Otto Nicolai, composer of The Merry Wives of Windsor (1842 lithograph by Josef Kriehuber, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons)

Yesterday afternoon my wife and I returned to the Legion of Honor for the latest installment in the 2024 Pocket Opera Season, Otto Nicolai’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. Unless I am mistaken, I have had only one previous encounter with this opera. It was through a black-and-white television set in Israel during my first full-time job following the completion of my graduate studies. The production seemed to be from the United Kingdom, and it was sung in English (with subtitles in Hebrew).

I had known the overture to this opera since childhood. (It also served incessantly as theme music for one of the Boston radio programs.) I had no trouble recognizing the themes during the telecast, and the staging was straightforward and engaging. Mind you, from a contemporary point of view, it could not hold a candle to the raucous account of the play in a Shakespeare in the Park production that was telecast on PBS. The fact is that Nicolai’s music was too sweet for William Shakespeare’s sharp edges, and Donald Pippin’s English-language account of Salomon Hermann Mosenthal’s rather bland libretto never quite did the trick.

However, what matters most in any opera is the music; and yesterday’s account left more than much to be desired. In the first place, the reduced ensemble of the Pocket Philharmonic fell way short of what Nicolai had in mind. Furthermore, the transparency of the one-to-a-part playing just never hit the nail on the head. This was particularly evident in the First Violin Chair, where Yasushi Ogura consistently fell short of homing in on the right pitch. Robby Stafford tried to do his best to lead from the keyboard, but that just weakened his own piano-playing.

In that context it is a bit of a wonder that any of the vocalists maintained a secure grasp of pitch; but, for the most part, they prevailed over the shortcomings of the orchestra. Unfortunately, only a few of them delivered well-develop characters. Fortunately, one of them was Kenneth Kellogg as Sir John Falstaff. There was never a dull moment when he was on stage, and his vocal work was consistently engaging. The only other vocalist that was equally engaging was Rena Harms in the role of Alice Ford. The two of them managed to keep the narrative rolling along, even when it had to coast through the duller episodes.

Nicolai composed this opera in 1849. According to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, its success never advanced beyond the German frontier (wherever that happened to be at the time). However, as he was approaching the age of 80, Giuseppe Verdi undertook his final partnership with Arrigo Boito; and the result was Falstaff. Finally, a composer gave Shakespeare the justice he deserved!