"We have together the two best Falstaffs in history"

Barcelona"It is a luxury to be able to have this farewell", says maestro Josep Pons at the press conference, who this month closes his stage as musical director of the Gran Teatre del Liceu after fourteen years of work. It is a farewell in two phases: conducting the orchestra of the Rambla theatre in the eight performances of Verdi's opera Falstaff (from July 9 to 19) and in the concert dedicated to Mahler's Symphony No. 8 'The Thousand' (July 24). "I tend to hold back my emotions", says Pons, who does admit that he feels very happy. "I believe that the job we were entrusted with, we have done. We have created a family, and we are lucky to be among good people. I am very pleased to finish at a peak moment", he assures, just after explaining that "working in an opera house is like entering a convent: it is an absolute absorption, you stop living". Happy and grateful, Pons, however, does not want the farewell to overshadow the performances of Falstaff. "Maestro Pons's last staged title, although he will have a title every year, at least", clarifies the theatre's artistic director, Víctor Garcia de Gomar, who recalls that from next season Pons will be honorary musical director of the Liceu.

It is undeniable that Pons has made the Liceu orchestra grow. This is confirmed by the reviews and the praise from guest conductors in recent seasons. And, certainly, he comes at a very good moment at the end of the 2025-2026 season; that is, with the confidence needed to tackle Mahler's eighth and Verdi's last opera, premiered in Milan in 1893, when the Italian composer was 80 years old. "For a long time Wagner and Verdi looked at each other sideways, and Wagner ends up influencing Falstaff. The two worlds finally came closer", says Pons, who highlights that the opera is a comedy, a genre little cultivated by Verdi.

Laurent Pelly, stage director

"I'm grateful to have together the two best Falstaffs in history," says Pons, sparing no compliments and sitting at the same table as Italian baritones Ambrogio Maestri (Pavia, 1970) and Lucas Salsi (San Secondo Parmense, 1975). Both have performed the role of this Shakespearean character, as comical and grotesque as he is solemn and sad, many times. Maestri sang it for the first time when he was 29 years old, and over time he says he has come to understand "what it means to be Falstaff," a man who represents both the joy of living and the loneliness of ending life "abandoned." "Falstaff has given me everything. It's a pearl in Verdi's operatic world," assures Maestri. "Verdi is the best composer of all time," exclaims Salsi, who has been singing this role for five years, the last time three months ago in Naples, precisely in the production directed by Frenchman Laurent Pelly, which is now arriving at the Liceu, and in which the action moves in two worlds. As explained by the reviser Benoît de Leersnyder, Pelly moves the 15th-century opera of the English King Henry V to the 20th century, and unfolds the action in "two worlds": that of Falstaff, an immense character, in a small world, a rather run-down bar, and an "enormous" world for the Merry Wives of Windsor.

"Falstaff is a comic character, but with a sad basis. He thinks he is a kind of Don Juan and acts as if he were, but he isn't," says Salsi. "He is a mythomaniac, a poor man who thinks he is extraordinary, who has sex appeal and can seduce the townswomen, the bourgeois women who mock him and who become true "}hooligans", adds De Leersnyder. Falstaff is a very greedy character, both in theatre and cinema, and in opera. Maestri and Salsi are aware of this; in fact, they like the power and the quantity of nuances of the role. At the end of the press conference, both talk about details they find "behind the notes", such as a high F that Maestri widens so that the note matches the verse about a vast kingdom. "He makes the note bigger to explain that the kingdom is big", says Salsi. And one gets the impression that they could spend hours commenting on all the life that lies behind the notes of Falstaff.

Luca Salsi and Ambrogio Maestri are Falstaff in a production with two casts. With Salsi, on July 9, 12, 15, and 18, Serena Sáenz, Santiago Ballerini, Carolina López Moreno, Daniela Barcellona, and Gemma Coma-Alabert will sing. With Maestri, on July 10, 13, 16, and 19, Maria Miró, César Cortés, Roberta Mantega, Marianna Pizzolato, and Laura Vila will sing. And in the eight performances, Lucas Meachem, Pablo García-López, Alessio Cacciamani, and Josep Fadó will sing. It is worth highlighting once again the Catalan talent in a Liceu production.