First photos of the premiere Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (The Merry Wives of Windsor)

Ms. Fluth and Ms. Reich, two married ladies, receive love letters from the impoverished nobleman Falstaff at the same time. They decide to teach him a lesson. At the same time, three cavaliers want to marry Anna, the daughter of Ms. Reich: Dr. Cajus, a French beau, is her mother's favourite, but her father prefers the shy Junker Spärlich, and Anna herself is in love with the penniless Fenton. Plenty of material for countless complications and entanglements.

More than 40 years before Verdi, Otto Nicolai and librettist Salomon Hermann Mosenthal used Shakespeare's play The Merry Wives of Windsor for their opera. Was it a romantic comedy the two had in mind, or can we even detect an influence from the revolutionary movements of 1848? Confident bourgeois women taking up the fight with aristocracy?

The young director Nina Spijkers shows - in a stage design by Rae Smith - her view of the opera. Now the first scene photos are here and give an insight into the work.

Premiere on 13 May 2023