Antonio Salieri set Shakespeare’s comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor to music in 1799, and his work was successfully premiered in Vienna the same year. Michael Hampe staged Salieris’s Falstaff at the Schwetzingen SWR Festival in 1995 with similar success – wonderfully supported by the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Arnold Östman. The libretto by Carlo Prospero Defranceschi reduces Shakespeare’s original play to a few main characters and drastically simplifies the plot. This gives John Del Carlo, Teresa Ringholz, Richard Croft and Delores Ziegler a lot of space for their artistic interpretation and brilliant singing. The work lives from the wealth of the Italian opera buffa and absorbed influences from the German Singspiel (song-play), and delights with a number of great arias.

Rossini was 24 years old when in 1816 he wrote his seventeenth and most famous opera The Barber of Seville in an astonishing three weeks. Michael Hampe’s humorous direction of his 1988 live performance at the Schwetzingen SWR Festival stands out with its fast tempo that makes for a highly exuberant production. Ezio Firgerio’s appealing stage and Mauro Pagano’s colourful costumes heighten the comic effect. The musical direction of conductor Gabriele Ferro strikes a beautiful balance between a vibrant orchestral performance and a superb ensemble of singers. The irresistible Cecilia Bartoli as Rosina leads a cast that also includes David Kuebler, Gino Quilico and Carlos Feller.