The bumbling and amorous adventures and misadventures of the rotund knight Sir John Falstaff, who conspires with his cohorts to have amorous adventures with more than one young lady in town. But Sir John has more to contend with than their jealous husbands! This brilliant comedic romp sparkles from start to finish.

“It is not often that a man's strength is so immense that he can remain an athlete after bartering half of it to old age for experience; but the thing happens occasionally, and need not so greatly surprise us in Verdi's case," said George Bernard Shaw. Verdi was happily living in retirement at his farm in Sant’Agata when Boito sent him the synopsis of a proposed libretto to be called Falstaff. Verdi’s enthusiasm was aroused by the libretto which was based primarily on Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. He had finally found the comic libretto he had dreamed of all his life. Boito’s inventions enthralled and dazzled Verdi. The nearly eighty-year-old composer became rejuvenated by the idea of Falstaff.

Verdi knew from experience that only a librettist with Boito’s intellectual range could transcend Shakespeare’s nuances in order to transform The Merry Wives of Windsor for the operatic medium. For Verdi, the essence of the comic Falstaff character was to have him emerge in rich magnificence and splendor. Only Boito, with his extraordinary fondness for word-play and irony was capable of achieving those results. In meeting those expectations, Boito took many liberties with the Falstaff character. He adapted and synthesized his underlying story scenario from both The Merry Wives of Windsor and the Henry IV plays, extracting the poor jokes, and turning bad ones into excellent verse. The opera captures the delicacy and wit of Shakespearean comedy as well as the prodigious personality of Shakespeare's rotund antihero.