The story of Sir John Falstaff can be summarized very briefly in the surrealist figure of a man who has aged, and aged badly. An autistic man, who absolutely wants to continue to seduce, he wants to have fun… it’s a story that must be followed as it unfolds. What is important is that Boïto and Verdi created a libretto that is truly brilliant. The music can be defined as Mozartian, because it is absolutely contrapuntal. But then there is a modern side to this opera which goes well beyond Schoenberg reaching to the contemporary man. Verdi, in his eighties, feels that the world is about to change, that the 19th century, the values which he had upheld, the values of Romanticism… everything will be sept away. The world is going towards modernity, but also this sort of technological Middle ages, this period of transition we live in, where everything is possible, everything is accessible and therefore worthless, this period in which the only faith is faith in technology. But technology is no ‘reason’; it is not ‘Vernunft’, not even ‘Aufklärung’ it is not enlightenment. So this Falstaff is the last game, immodest and irreverent as it may be of a man who still has a taste for life. It is a great lesson for contemporary man. This is why on stage there are only organic, simple, handmade materials and the characters give up their corporeity to become not yet symbols but silhouettes in which the audience can recognise themselves. People recognise themselves when they see something they carry inside and theatre must work a bit like a museum, or a church, it must be a moment of development of spiritual discovery.