Falstaff’s monologue ‘Ehi! paggio!... L’onore! Ladri!’ (Falstaff, Act I)

Program notes

About the Work

Falstaff was Verdi’s farewell to the stage: a sparkling comedy written when he was nearly eighty, his only comic opera since a youthful failure half a century earlier, and a score of dazzling lightness and wit. Boito’s libretto draws on Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor and the Henry IV plays to build it around Sir John Falstaff, the fat, vain, impoverished old knight. In this Act I monologue, Falstaff’s cronies Bardolfo and Pistola have refused, on grounds of ‘honour’, to deliver his love letters. Falstaff explodes: first with ‘Ehi! paggio!’ as he summons his page to carry them instead, then into the celebrated tirade on honour (‘L’onore! Ladri!’). What, he demands, is honour? Can it fill an empty belly, mend a leg, set a broken arm? It is a mere word, a puff of air. The monologue is Shakespeare’s cynicism (from Henry IV) set to music of astonishing nimbleness, ending as Falstaff chases the rogues out with a broom.

What to Listen For

Listen for the conversational speed of the writing. Verdi at eighty composes patter that turns on a dime, the orchestra darting and commenting like a fourth character. There are no set-piece arias here; the music follows every shrug and snort of Falstaff’s reasoning. Savour the mock-philosophical grandeur Verdi lends to ‘L’onore!’, inflated then instantly pricked, and the whirlwind of the final chase. It is comedy as orchestral filigree, sung by a bass-baritone who must act with his voice.