Sir John in Munich
Otto Nicolai’s Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor makes a rare and welcome reappearance next month thanks to Juilliard Opera.

Other operatic settings of the adventures of Sir John Falstaff include Verdi’s and Salieri’s Falstaff, along with Holst’s At the Boar’s Head and Vaughn Williams’s Sir John in Love.
A previous Trove Thursday post featured New York City Opera’s take on Nicolai in English from 1980 with Carol Vaness as Frau Fluth and William Wildermann as Sir John.
A very different side of Nicolai can be heard in Il Templario with Clémentine Margaine, Juan Diego Florez and Luca Salsi.
Nicolai: Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor
Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich
15 October 1983
Broadcast
Frau Fluth: Lucia Popp
Frau Reich: Cornelia Wulkupf
Anna: Julie Kaufmann
Sir John Falstaff: Kurt Moll
Herr Fluth: Wolfgang Brendel
Herr Reich: Karl Helm
Fenton: Peter Seiffert
Junker Spärlich: Claes H. Ahnsjö
Dr. Cajus: John Janssen
Conductor: Wolfgang Sawallisch
Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Overture and Incidental music
Basilika, Eberbach
28 June 2014
Broadcast
Miah Persson
Golda Schultz
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Paavo Järvi
Lustigen Weiber and Midsummer can be downloaded by clicking on the icon of a cloud with an arrow pointing downward on the audio player above and the resulting mp3 files will appear in your download directory.
In addition, well over 500 other podcast tracks are always available from Apple Podcasts for free, or via any RSS reader. The archive which lists all Trove Thursday offerings in alphabetical order by composer will soon be updated.
Christopher Corwin
Christopher Corwin began writing for parterre box in 2011 under the pen name “DeCaffarrelli.” His work has also appeared in , The New York Times, Musical America, The Observer, San Francisco Classical Voice and BAMNotes. Like many, he came to opera via the Saturday Met Opera broadcasts which he began listening to at age 11. His particular enthusiasm is 17th and 18th century opera. Since 2015 he has curated the weekly podcast Trove Thursday on parterre box presenting live recordings.
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Topics: trove thursday