In the world of opera, a new production by Jonathan Miller is a significant event.
The veteran English director turns 70 in July, and in his new production of Verdi's "Falstaff," running June 25-July 3 at the New National Theatre in Tokyo, his contributions to the worlds of comedy, theater and art combine to wonderfully enhance both the depth and breadth of the work.
Verdi was 80 when he wrote "Falstaff" in 1893. It would be his last opera and his only major comedy. Miller is himself a comedian, having started out in 1961 in "Beyond the Fringe," the hit British radio-comedy show with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (Miller has called it, with irony, "catastrophically successful.") That may have been more than 40 years ago, but in a pre-show talk about this production he showed that his sharp comic sense hasn't dulled, as he acted out sketches in which someone trips on a sidewalk, or comes in late to a lecture, much to the audience's enjoyment.