SPATIAL RECONFIGURATIONS OF POWER: FROM SHAKESPEARE’S THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR TO VERDI’S FALSTAFF STAGED BY THE METROPOLITAN OPERA, NEW YORK (2013)
SPATIAL RECONFIGURATIONS OF POWER: FROM SHAKESPEARE’S THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR TO VERDI’S FALSTAFF STAGED BY THE METROPOLITAN OPERA, NEW YORK (2013)

Summary/Abstract: This article focuses on the peculiar setting – the kitchen – chosen for the revenge scene in Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff (Act II, scene 2) by director Robert Carsen for his production at the Metropolitan Opera, New York (2013). I examine side by side Arrigo Boito’s libretto and the corresponding scenes in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor in order to highlight the textual clues that may support Carsen’s choice. Against the background provided by a brief historicisation of the emergence of the modern kitchen and its association (originally) with bourgeois women, I discuss Carsen’s revenge scene, by recourse to gender theory, as a masquerade of femininity, i.e., a mockingly exaggerated performance of gender.

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