Borghesi insolenti contro un nobile decaduto. Una rilettura del Falstaff di Boito e Verdi in chiave sociale

According to Robert Weimann “it is only when Elizabethan society, theatre, and language are seen as interrelated that the structure of Shakespeare’s dramatic art emerges as fully functional”. Starting from this position, this essay focuses on the social dimension in Falstaff and, in particular, its influence on the musical-dramaturgical form of the opera. While in the libretto Boito underlines social distinctions between the characters through his refined choice of words, Verdi’s music emphasizes the contrast between the “impoverished nobleman (Falstaff) and the “insolent bourgeoises” (Alice and Meg) at two particular points in the opera: first, in the scene where Meg and Alice compare Falstaff’s Letters (Act I, second part), and the second where Falstaff attempts to seduce Alice (Act II, second part). Examined within the social and political context of Italy’s post-Unification period, the work acquires a new level of meaning, which sheds light on the contradictions between the struggles of an emerging middle class and the persistence of an archaic aristocratic structure of society.