Few operatic characters straddle the operatic stage larger than Sir John Falstaff. Read our in depth 'opera portrait' on Verdi's Falstaff as well as some of his other guises.
In the end, the big man gets the last laugh. Come to think of it, he also gets the first laugh, but for different reasons: you sense that Verdi steadily grew to love Falstaff in the course of writing the opera, as he turns from a coarse buffoon into a maligned old man and, eventually, into the spirit of laughter itself.
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