"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 contain 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 end at an all-time high," 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' 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 the Liceu's honorary musical director.

It is undeniable that Pons has made the Liceu orchestra grow. This is confirmed by the reviews and praise from guest conductors in recent seasons. And, indeed, he is ending at a very good time 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. "Wagner and Verdi had been looking at each other sideways for a long time, and Wagner ends up influencing "Falstaff. The two worlds finally came closer," says Pons, who highlights that the opera is a comedy, a genre not much cultivated by Verdi.

Laurent Pelly, stage director

"I'm delighted to have the two best Falstaffs in history together," says Pons, sparing no praise, and seated at the same table as the Italian baritones Ambrogio Maestri (Pavia, 1970) and Lucas Salsi (San Secondo Parmense, 1975). Both have performed the role of this Shakespearean character, as comic and grotesque as he is solemn and sad, many times. Maestri sang it for the first time when he was 29, 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 within 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 the Frenchman Laurent Pelly, which is now arriving at the Liceu, and in which the action moves in two worlds. As Benoît de Leersnyder, the reviser, explains, 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 dilapidated bar, and an "enormous" world for the Merry Wives of Windsor.

"Falstaff is a comic character, but fundamentally sad. 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 who can seduce the matrons, the bourgeois women who mock him and who become real "}hooligans", adds De Leersnyder. Falstaff is a very gluttonous 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", like a high F that Maestri widens so that the note fits with the verse about a vast kingdom. "He makes the note bigger to explain that the kingdom is large," 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 the 10th, 13th, 16th, and 19th, Maria Miró, César Cortés, Roberta Mantega, Marianna Pizzolato, and Laura Vila. 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.