Composed by Antonio Salieri (to a libretto by Carlo Prospers Defranceschi), Falstaff or The Three Tricks was premiered at the Kärntnertortheater, Vienna, on January 3, 1799. At the time, Salieri was in the midst of his long tenure as music director of the Imperial Opera in Vienna and still riding on the peak of his popularity as an operatic composer from the start of the decade. Parts of the overture will recall style and tone of the broader, more buoyant sections of the overture of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's The Abduction From the Seraglio (and, to a lesser degree, the overture from The Marriage of Figaro), which Salieri had overseen in its 1782 Viennese premiere. Loosely adapted from Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, the opera is a simplification of its source, eliminating the story of the young lovers Anne Page and Fenton, instead devoting itself to Sir John Falstaff and the series of humiliations he suffers at the hands of Alice Ford and Mistress Slender. To call Falstaff a romp would be putting it mildly, as its subtitle, "The Three Jokes," would seem to indicate, from the bouncy overture that sets the mood as well as providing a musical description of the title character, the tone is one of a lighthearted comic interlude in Windsor Forest. The work opens with a broad chorus depicting a party at the home of Slender and Mistress Slender, to which Falstaff has invited himself and begun courting Mistress Ford in the absence of her husband; his intentions include amorous leave-taking and some profit from Mistress Ford over the indiscretion; however, she and Mistress Slender contrive to gain the confidence of the obese nobleman, which becomes a prelude to a series of practical jokes intended to thwart him from his amorous pursuits, now and forever. Before it is over, he will be dunked in the Thames, pummeled, and made to renounce his habits. The writing throughout features lovely passages of great nobility juxtaposed with comic jealousies, such as the aria and recitative for Ford in Act 1, Scene 5; and the heartfelt pain and outrage felt by Mistress Slender in Scene 6, in which she hatched her plan for revenge upon Falstaff for compromising her with his unwanted, unbidden letters. Though the influence of Mozart is obvious, one of the other influences on Salieri's music here was Christoph Willibald Gluck, with whom he had collaborated in producing the latter's ballet Don Juan and his opera Orfeo in the 1860s. At various points, including the overture and Ford's aria in Act 1, Scene 12, Salieri emulates Gluck's style. Falstaff was a popular work in its time, by virtue of its touching many familiar bases rather than any new ones—the opera's lack of staying power in the repertory may be attributed to that failing, coupled with "competition" from such subsequent works utilizing the same source as Verdi's Falstaff: Nicolai's The Merry Wives of Windsor and Vaughan Williams' Sir John in Love.

© Bruce Eder, All Music Guide