Laughing with him

Everybody loves Bryn Terfel.

What’s not to love? In Los Angeles Opera’s “Falstaff,” which opened at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Saturday afternoon, the world’s favorite Welsh bass-baritone is, as any Falstaff must be, funny, boisterous, delightfully incorrigible and -- thank goodness -- a touch nasty. He has no problem adhering to the first law of playing Falstaff, whether on stage or in Verdi’s opera.

“From the actor’s point of view,” the poet W.H. Auden once wrote, “the role of Falstaff has the enormous advantage that he has only to think of one thing -- playing to an audience.”

Falstaff is always on. He exists for the entertainment of us in the seats and for the entertainment of the characters on stage. Fat, long past his prime yet still with an immense capacity for wine, women and self-regard, he lives in and for the moment. His past is probably not worth thinking about. His future is nothing to look forward to. His present is pretty pathetic too, but failure still has the power to surprise him.

Terfel is such a Falstaff, and a great singer. Verdi’s swan song gives him a score, written in the composer’s 80th year, with no time to waste in its trajectory toward touching the heart. This is music in which the friendly flicker of emotion -- be it love, lust, hate, trust or mistrust -- reminds us that passions are always in motion; what matters is living life. A buffoon receives his comeuppance but keeps his dignity, and in the process we learn that we are all buffoons and we all get to keep our dignity as well. No opera can give you more than that.

Terfel is in some good company on the Chandler stage and under it. In the pit, Kent Nagano conducts a smooth-flowing performance of delicacy and wit. The rest of the cast is not on Terfel’s stage-fillingly alive level (you won’t find one that is, and if you could you’d have a huge ego-warring mess on your hands), but colleagues provide good Falstaffian foil and some pleasing ensemble work.

And all that should certainly be enough. But, alas, it is not. Which is not to say that this “Falstaff” isn’t worth your attention. It is, once you overcome various obstacles.

The production is a revered antique. It was made for the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1982 because its then music director, Carlo Maria Giulini, missed opera and happened to be in a reflective mood. The sets, by Hayden Griffin, were realistic and looked like they took their inspiration from old theater history books. The costumes, by Michael Stennett, did the same.

Not having seen this production since (although it was for years at Royal Opera in Covent Garden and has also been used by L.A. Opera), I don’t want to trust memory of 23 years ago. But Falstaff’s stuffing and tastelessly foppish outfits may not have seemed problematic back then, thanks to Giulini’s suffusing the opera with an unusually weighty and autumnal glow. Also, taste in clothes was generally awful then anyway.

The antique has been refurbished. Richard Eyre’s original production has been handed over to Stephen Lawless. Slapstick has entered the picture.

Going from no laughs (at least none that I can remember) to cheap laughs isn’t the worst sin in the world. This “Falstaff” is funny, and so is Terfel. He sometimes takes his cue from Oliver Hardy’s fat-klutz dainty manners, and some day a director might actually make Terfel into a kind of Oliver Hardy. Here, though, Terfel is so plastered in Falstaffian makeup that he has to somehow break free of his clothes and grease-paint to make any impression at all.

Many questionable touches have been added. Falstaff sings of honor while having what appears to be a heart attack. Suddenly, he recovers and boxes the ears of his goofy sidekicks, Bardolph and Pistol. Is he faking it? Whether he is or not, this added level of desperation makes Sir John less ambiguous, less interesting.

Dumped from the balcony in a laundry basket by Windsor’s merry wives, Falstaff doesn’t return to the tavern to ponder his misery. The basket stays in the yard, and the tavern comes to Falstaff. His escape routes keep narrowing. Windsor’s castle comes to seem Kafka’s “Castle.” The final masquerade turns into Halloween. Halloween?

Ultimately, the desperation here seems to reflect the problem of how to salvage this hoary production and make it somehow fit a star singer. My choice would have been to make other choices. That said, it needs to be recalled that this “Falstaff” was a genie pulled out of a bottle by the company.

Terfel was originally signed on to sing “Sweeney Todd,” but DreamWorks, hoping someday to make a movie, grabbed the rights to Stephen Sondheim’s operetta and, in an act of highhanded artistic censorship, forced the company to cancel its production. The film is on hold, and DreamWorks did allow a British production to be done last fall, but didn’t relax the local ban.

Without the luxury of advance planning, L.A. Opera, in the end, was able to assemble an appealing cast. The Windsor wives -- Kallen Esperian as Alice Ford and Milena Kitic as Meg Page -- add spice. Jane Henschel’s Mistress Quickly nicely mimics Falstaff. As the lovers Nannetta and Fenton, Celena Shafer and Daniil Shtoda sing, for the most part, sweetly. Vassily Gerello’s Ford blusters as Ford should. David Cangelosi (Dr. Caius), Greg Fedderly (Bardolph) and Dean Peterson (Pistol) get well-earned laughs.

It is hard not to wonder what Terfel’s Sweeney Todd might have brought. So if you must see “Madagascar,” do please think for a second about whom you are dealing with when the DreamWorks logo hits the screen.

*

‘Falstaff’

Where: Los Angeles Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Friday and June 6, 9 and 15; 2 p.m. June 12

Price: $25 to $190

Contact: (213) 972-8001 or www.losangelesopera.com