the world of music . a drastic way with Verdi . by Desmond Shawe-Taylor . the score of Falstaff seems to have ripened against a warm orchard wall . it is all juice and goodness , firm flesh and sweet tang : at once earthy and heavenly , mellow and zestful , old and young . this is one of music &apos;s miracles ; and the miracle was achieved by Boito &apos;s cunning and Verdi &apos;s genius upon the basis of an effective but prosaic Shakespearean farce . Franco Zeffirelli &apos;s new production , unveiled at Covent Garden last Wednesday , was eagerly awaited after his romantic Lucia and his wonderfully brilliant Cav and Pag at the same house - not to mention his more controversial Romeo and Juliet at the Old Vic . his Falstaff , though likely to prove a hit , is again controversial . visually , it is inventive and often lovely . dramatically , it is a hotchpotch : imaginative , eccentric , frequently crude . the worst comes near the beginning . if you can accept the short opening scene between Falstaff and his followers , the evening has no further terrors for you . the style here is that of the crazy gang , though without their sublime impudence ; for if Messrs Naughton and Gold had played Pistol and Bardolph , they would at least have stormed the royal box and tried on a tiara . Michael Langdon and Robert Bowman could only rampage and roister around the stage , though only is a poor word , for they achieved a good deal . for instance , Geraint Evans &apos;s admirable delivery of the honour tirade was effectively diminished when to each one of Falstaff &apos;s rhetorical questions Bardolph , from beneath a table or halfway up the stairs , insisted on nodding a tireless and zany affirmative . thence to Ford &apos;s garden , a sort of inn courtyard : striking . enter two letter-carrying wives ( Mariella Angioletti and Josephine Veasey ) , a Dutch-doll Nannetta ( Mirella Freni ) and &amp;hellip; but who is this , sweeping in , last and grandest , like a beruffed Lady Bracknell , with parasol at the slope and lorgnettes at the ready ? can it be our old friend Mrs Quickly , servant to Dr Caius and Eastcheap hostess ? of course , she runs the entire show ; the only surprise is that she did n&apos;t get a letter too . if so wild a misinterpretation can be tolerated , she is capitally sung and played by the exuberant Regina Resnik . that Mrs Ford hardly got a look in was to some extent the fault of Signora Angioletti , who on the first night continually allowed her phrases to vanish in mid-utterance as though the current had been cut off . the explanation can hardly be a failure of voice , for a few bars later all was well again ; I fear it must have been art . in the second act things began to improve , although Mrs Quickly &apos;s famous deep curtseys on the word Reverenza ! were turned into nonsense by having to be executed on a staircase . best of all was the great scene between Ford and Falstaff , where no misplaced ingenuity was allowed to impair our pleasure in the excellent singing of John Shaw and Mr Evans and in the brilliant and zestful playing of the orchestra under Signor Giulini . the orchestra was throughout in splendid form ; particularly at the quiet end of act 3 , scene 1 , where the empty stage and darkening sky , the calling of the distant voices , the magical chain of descending harmonies and the slowly closing curtains were combined by producer and conductor into an exquisite theatrical unity . the tapestried interior of Ford &apos;s house made a delightful spectacle , and the final scene opened in a vein of high romance , with pale shafts of moonlight striking across the forest glade ; but on the arrival of the fairies Herne &apos;s oak split asunder and soared aloft , never to be seen again . we found ourselves back in the inn courtyard - but a courtyard transformed into such a dream-pageant as might have been conjured up by a Chagall given unlimited funds to stage a party for Mr Bestegui or Mr Onassis . somewhere in the course of all this - the clowning and the prettiness , the slapstick and whimsy and phantasmagoria - Verdi &apos;s simplicity and honesty have fallen by the wayside . but the compensations are great , especially on the musical side - and I fear it is the kind of showy production that makes such a phrase seem natural . great pleasure is given by Luigi Alva and Signora Freni as the young lovers . Signor Giulini excels in the purely lyrical music , and the details are always handled with loving care ; where breadth and robustness are demanded he is sometimes less happy . Mr Evans continues to ripen and improve his distinguished Falstaff , but we can not expect to see this impersonation at its best until it figures within a less confusing framework . the Welsh national opera company began an enterprising week of opera at Sadler &apos;s Wells with two much earlier Verdi operas : the Nabucco of 1842 and la battaglia di Legnano of 1849 . both were accompanied by the Bournemouth orchestra and conducted by Charles Groves with no very marked feeling for the appropriate style . Nabucco was in all essentials the production that has been seen in London twice before , but it is now distinguished by a new Abigail ( Elizabeth Vaughan ) who tackled her very difficult music with remarkable aplomb and accuracy , if she can enrich her timbre she might go far . both operas are full of stirring choral scenes , sung vigorously but with a faulty sense of legato by the Welsh choir . drastic treatment was again meted out to Verdi in la battaglia di Legnano , which lost all connection with what the press statement called a rather dated incident in the 12th century and was lugged forward into modern times by John Moody , to become an episode of the Italian resistance during the German occupation . modern diction and ways of thought were , however , not consistently adopted . in one of Verdi &apos;s furious cabalettas ( husband discovering wife &apos;s supposed infidelity ) trema ! trema ! coppia esecrata ! became damn you ! damn you ! pair of dirty liars ! ; but when the wife popped a compromising letter into her bosom ( standard post-box for operatic missives ) , it instantly stung her like a serpent . notwithstanding such quaint distractions , the power and the beauty of Verdi &apos;s invention in the last two acts could be perceived . the best singing came from Heather Harper . the Welsh opera continues to deserve our gratitude , but could learn much in the way of vocal style from a surprisingly vocal performance of Rossini &apos;s Otello by the Philopera circle at St Pancras on Friday , about which I hope to add a word or two next week . Welsh night . between them , Cardiff and St Pancras ensure that not a note written by Verdi remains unheard in London . meanwhile , thanks to the Welsh national opera company for bringing , if only for a single May night , another Rimsky-Korsakov opera to Sadler &apos;s Wells , a theatre which knew snow maiden and Tsar Saltan in pre-war days . May night , a folksy precursor of the more sophisticated orientalisms of Sadko and the golden cockerel , proved a happy choice , with the pleasing voices of John Wakefield ( Levko ) , Iona Jones ( Anna ) and Heather Harper ( Queen of the Roussalki ) well-suited to its melodic grace . the male topers , too , Harold Blackburn , Laurie Payne and Stephen Manton , entered into the spirit of the piece , but not Phyllis Ash Child &apos;s completely un-shrewish sister-in-law . Sally Hulke &apos;s sets and John Moody &apos;s production , like the chorus , provided more acceptable contributions than the Bournemouth symphony orchestra , whose neat rhythmic response to Charles Makerras &apos;s conducting was too often wide of the mark in pitch . Boito &apos;s Mefistofele remains the company &apos;s most imaginative production . triumphing ingeniously over space , it depicts heaven and a witches &apos; sabbath as successfully as Faust &apos;s study . Raimund Herinex has , again , the right voice and manner for the prince of evil , but rejuvenation brings Tano Ferendino &apos;s Faust no increased vocal confidence . under Warwick Braithwaite the orchestra recovered pitch , while sagging intonation crossed the footlights , weighing heavier on the angelic chorus of the prologue than their golden wings . F A . ballet . by Richard Buckle . what every guru knows . on Wednesday night , when my pampered colleagues were borne in their capacious palanquins either to - Zeffirelli &apos;s ( Verdi &apos;s ( Shakespeare &apos;s ) ) - Falstaff or to see those onychophorous ootocoids at the Fortune , this Cinderella among critics made his way alone and on foot to watch Indian dancing at La Scala in Charlotte Street . now , though I would not go as far as to agree with the programme that the technique of Kamala , the eldest of the three sisters performing , is in the enveable position of being above controversy , she has learnt some of Bharata Natya and she gets by . Radha and Vasanti are graceful , too . it is how their brother Mr Kumar got on stage that beats me - unless , of course , he is really Peter Sellers . from his performance , I guessed that , watching his kid sisters perfecting themselves in their art , he suddenly could n&apos;t bear not to be in on it too , and finally forbade them to appear without him . there can be no doubt that , like Romeo Coates , he believes utterly in his mission . dance inspires him ceaselessly to strive higher and higher towards the shining pinnacle of perfection that is the goal of every artiste . Kathak , with its swift spins , is what bedizened boys used to dance before Mogul Emperors . Mr Kumar rashly did it stripped to the waist , his long hair arranged in an untidy bird&apos;s-nest . he never got up much speed , and made few turns . what he did do was to fix us with a basilisk stare , make odd pointing gestures and keep improvising for about twenty minutes . a polite attempt to drive him offstage with a burst of applause only spurred him to go on and on . eventually his attention wandered from his work , and his eye hit on a ground mike near the footlights . he had a bright idea . he stopped dancing , pulled the mike upstage and , indicating his anklets of bells , told us now I will make you hear one bell - just one bell , not four hundred . starting with the full carillon ( if someone had not turned off the mike we should have been deafened ) he went into a shuddering Antonio-type diminuendo . even so I heard not one bell , but at least six . then he started dancing again . the able drummer , the flautist who was a worthy disciple to the great living flute wizard Sri T R Mahalingam , Mali to his innumerable fans , and the nice lady singer who let it be known that she was married to Mr Narian who was a dancing partner to the veteran dancer Mr Ramgopal seemed embarrassed . and I exchanged looks with a neighbour who happened to be a one-year-old ( yes ) Indian boy in a white fur coat . records . hands and feet . by Felix Aprahamian . recording companies no longer neglect the King of instruments , and the recent spate of organ records reflects the younger and more discriminating organ fanciers &apos; demands for authenticity of timbre and interpretation . the fascination as well as the bugbear of the organ is that no two are alike in specification or sound , so that discs of organ music played on the very instrument for which it was conceived deserve an especial welcome . some , of course , remain curiosities rather than performances : Widor was an octogenarian when he recorded his toccata , the organist &apos;s warhorse , at Saint-Sulpice . now , his pupil and successor , Marcel Dupr&amp;eacute; , himself in his seventies and a pioneer of organ records , has re-recorded it there in a coupling with Widor &apos;s fifth and Gothic symphonies which shows how well his master scored for his beloved Cavaill&amp;eacute;-Coll instrument . ( Westminster - mono only . ) Mercury issue five discs of Dupr&amp;eacute; at Saint-Sulpice , of which two are of particular interest , Vol 2 consisting entirely of his own music , and Vol 5 which also includes les bergers , by his one-time pupil Olivier Messaien . noisy surfaces , but the right kind of noise behind them . another Dupr&amp;eacute; pupil , the Belgian Flor Peeters , has recorded some pre-Bach organ music from north Germany and the Netherlands on the Schnitger rebuild at St Michael &apos;s , Zwolle . clearer music and a clearer sound . a splendid record . ( HMV - mono . ) 