A weekend visit to Chicago brought me into contact with an old man whose life is marked by disorder. He’s a lush, grossly overweight, broke, and a self-deluded lover of young women. Drinking and carousing seem to be his main activities, as well as scheming how to get money by romancing other men’s wives.

The man’s name is Falstaff, as in Sir John Falstaff, the central figure in Giuseppe Verdi’s opera of the same name. That is the work I was privileged to see last week in the Chicago Lyric Opera’s lively production. The spectacle and, especially, the musical themes bid fair to remain in my head for weeks to come.

Bryn Terfel, the much acclaimed Welsh baritone, scored a smashing success in the role, the first time he has sung it. His paunch-led maneuverings as he walked and rolled around the stage provided us, the audience, with constant amusement. As a Hollywood puff might have put it, Terfel was Falstaff.

Inventor of the original Falstaff was, of course, Shakespeare. The playwright placed him in three works – The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry the Fourth, Part One and Part Two –  creating one of the greatest comic characters in world literature.

This is the character that Verdi chose for the centerpiece of his last opera. The great Italian composer and hero of his country’s risorgimento was approaching eighty years of age when he completed the work. For decades he had been hoping to write a comic opera but did not find an appropriate subject until his librettist, Arrigo Boito, gave him a clever script built around the famous Shakespearean character.

In this last work, Verdi displayed a genius of invention that had developed with the advance of years. Falstaff, the opera, shows a style radically different from that of his earlier works, and even from the famous operas of his middle period – La Traviata, Rigoletto, and Il Trovatore. The music of his last opera flows seamlessly all through the piece, without the set arias so characteristic of the earlier Verdi.

The plot revolves around Sir John’s efforts to seduce Alice Ford and Meg Page, the charming wives resident in Windsor, and the revenge that these merry women take on the hapless knight. Their first revenge comes when they manage to get the fat man hidden in a basket of laundry and then have their servants empty him out of the basket into the River Thames.

The second retaliation comes in the last act when the Windsor wives terrorize Falstaff in a forest that they have peopled with their many friends disguised as evil spirits of the night. Sir John is tricked out his wits and becomes scared for his life.

Falstaff, though constantly presented as old, hardly serves as a all-purpose model for old age. Over and over he succeeds in making a fool of himself. His plans to take advantage of other people for his own advantage blow up in his face. Rollicking always, he manages to amuse us but always at his own expense.

One quality he does have, however, is resilience. He falls down often, both literally and figuratively, but just as often he pulls himself up. Yes, he is a buffoon but ultimately a loveable buffoon. Even when he indulges in that unloveliest of emotions, self-pity, he shows forth a humanity that is endearing. Spirit keeps triumphing even over that great mound of flesh that is old Jack.

Old age, most of us have discovered on entering upon it, is not neat. Like Sir John, we can be tricked more or less easily. Despite our alleged growth in wisdom, we can find ourselves acting like fools. At times, we may even have to live with a nagging sense of things falling apart.

Why are our lives so often untractable? Should they not by this point have become more ordered, harmonious, consistent, and peaceful? Perhaps the young man Shakespeare knew better; almost surely the old man Verdi knew the awful truth.

The older we get, the more we can remain a puzzle to ourselves. Yes, on occasion we seem to achieve growth in self-knowledge, yet our hold on it stays slippery. There remains an element of the tragic in our lives that can get us all down. Inevitably, life in our dark moments sometimes seems not worth the effort.

But the comic side of it all also counts. If we miss seeing this, we miss much of the meaning of being human. At the opera’s end, Falstaff joins his playful tormentors and sings “Tutto nel mondo è burla”  (Everything in the world’s a jest). As one commentator says, “If you picture old Giuseppe Verdi slipping on the costume of Falstaff – belly, red nose, and all – you will comprehend the composer’s view at the end of his years of what life really means.”

Richard Griffin