“Inside the English Pub and in the Mind of Sir John Falstaff”. This is how Giorgos Suglidis describes the set he created for Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff, a new production by the National Opera House (ELS) that premieres next Thursday starring Dimitris Platanias. In this production, J. Suglidis signs the sets and costumes, a work done with meticulous attention to the smallest detail.

This is not the first time the international English-speaking Cypriot set and costume designer has collaborated with the artistic director of the British Glydebourne Opera Festival, show director Stephen Langridge. “From the beginning, Stephen wanted the play to be completely English,” he tells us, explaining how the ideas for this particular production came about. The chemistry between them is great, their way of thinking is shared, and their close collaboration since early 2020 has led to today’s result.

Inspiration flowed from one to the other – “only such a collaboration can really support the director’s vision,” Mr. Suglidis comments, “they ended up developing a light-hearted, entertaining show. Langridge takes Falstaff’s story to England in the 1930s, when an obsession with social hierarchy that bordered on feudalism reigned supreme. The director notes: “Falstaff is a comedy in the deepest sense of the word, often with elements of farce, which nevertheless gives us an opportunity to look into what is happening in the depths of the characters’ souls. At the heart of the whole play is the most beloved villain of Shakespeare and Verdi: Falstaff, a liar, a deceiver, an intriguer, sensual, ambitious, old-fashioned.

Thus, although the work is purely a comic opera, which the then 80-year-old Italian composer enjoyed composing after the success of Othello, is based on Shakespeare’s comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor, skipping time to where we live in the interwar period: the “naughty” prince Welsh briefly reigns as Edward VIII (like Hal in Henry IV) before abdicating to marry his American socialite and twice-divorced mistress, Wallis Simpson. All this takes place before World War II destroyed the old values ​​forever, at a time when social class was still more important than the economic surface.

“This is a comedy in the deepest sense of the word, which nevertheless gives us a picture of what goes on in the depths of the characters’ souls.”

The experienced librettist Arrigo Boito, who collaborated with Verdi on this particular opera, surprisingly forgetting their earlier differences, deftly placed Falstaff at the center of the play. “This is the only truly leading role in opera that all the others revolve around,” comments musicologist Nikos Dontas. “Verdi used a huge palette to convey various aspects of the protagonist. In his two monologues, he criticizes an unjust world and gives moral lessons, he appears to Alice as a great heartthrob, to her husband Ford as a vain knight, but in the end they laugh at him in a forest scene.

So, three acts of the opera take place inside this typical English pub – a bar full of drinks, a classic dart board – all in dark wood colors. In a clever script, Boito brings the play to a magical conclusion in the third act, moving the action to Windsor Forest. Through the atmosphere of a midsummer night’s dream, there are two final comic episodes, here Falstaff receives his last “lesson” and double weddings take place.

With a similar virtuoso movement, George Suglidis moves the wooden beams of the roof of the pub and turns them into tree trunks in the forest, so that they all end very gracefully in Verdi’s final fugue “Everything in the world is a joke. .. he deceives everyone … He laughs, but it is better who laughs last.

Suits with Savile Row sewing technique

So what is this fallen knight wearing, an indebted lover trying to make the most of his social privileges? Obviously suits that look like they were made by a 1930s English tailor.

With his characteristic perfectionism, after many months of searching for period clothing to suit the characters in the play, Mr. Suglidis invited John Lindell to Athens to work with ELLS, supervising the costume design. “I’m an expert in vintage theatrical costume design and have been working at the opera in Britain all my life,” he introduces himself when we meet him in Lyrica’s dressing room. He loves Greece, he has been there many times as a tourist, he has seen many productions of ELLS, but he is working here for the first time.

Drawing inspiration from the clothing of movie stars such as Clark Gable and Katharine Hepburn, he and his team prepare costumes for the project. The choir has 22 men, 22 women and 9 soloists – 6 men and 3 women. Each of them has at least two suits, and they are all made to order.

22 women and 9 soloists (6 men, 3 women) – each has at least two costumes, and everything is made to order.

“Men’s suits in the 1930s are especially different from today, and my job was to train tailors to create models, as well as a team of tailors to sew clothes using the techniques of that historical period,” he explains. . In fact, Mr. Lindell uses Savile Row tailoring techniques, and since most of the work is done by hand, each men’s suit takes about two weeks to complete. Women’s dresses and robe de chambre in perfectly cut silk, with a line that opens at the hips and reaches mid-calf, giving height and elegance to the figure.

“We also need to know how to handle the different body types of singers; sometimes we have to be a bit of a psychologist to think about how everyone will feel in their clothes,” adds Mr. Liddell. It’s not just about making sure the clothes fit the people who wear them – “it’s easy when you have a niche group of people,” comments Mr. Liddell. The main goal of the designer is to make sure that the costume fits the character and serves the development of the story. Does this dress need more skirt material? Should the cutout be lower? The dress should be richer, i.e. have more decorative items or bows? Should this particular suit have large shoulders or should the trousers be wider?

The result fully conveys the historical period and has the accuracy of a movie costume preparation, not a theatre, where the requirements for historical accuracy are usually limited.