Editing Falstaff (opera) (section)

===Premieres===
The first performance of ''Falstaff'' was at [[La Scala]] in Milan on 9 February 1893, nearly six years after Verdi's previous premiere. For the first night, official ticket prices were thirty times greater than usual.<ref name=h55 />{{refn|Reserved seats on the ''platea'' (main floor) were raised from 5 lire to 150 lire, with similar increases in other parts of the house.<ref name=h55/>|group= n}} Royalty, aristocracy, critics and leading figures from the arts all over Europe were present.<ref name=h55>Hepokoski, pp. 55–56</ref> The performance was a huge success under the baton of [[Edoardo Mascheroni]]; numbers were encored, and at the end the applause for Verdi and the cast lasted an hour.{{refn|Although most of the music is [[through-composed]], with no obvious breaks where an encore could be taken, Verdi had agreed in advance that the women's quartet "Quell'otre! quel tino!" and Falstaff's brief song "Quand'ero paggio" could be encored. Hepokoski speculates that the conductor may have slowed and then briefly stopped the music to allow the audience to applaud.<ref name=h126>Hepokoski, pp. 126–127</ref> At later performances Verdi allowed other sections of the score to be encored, including Nannetta's "Sul fil d'un soffio etesio".<ref name=h126 />|group=n}} That was followed by a tumultuous welcome when the composer, his wife and Boito arrived at the Grand Hotel de Milan.<ref name=h55 />

Over the next two months the work was given twenty-two performances in Milan and then taken by the original company, led by Maurel, to Genoa, Rome, Venice, Trieste, Vienna and, without Maurel, to Berlin.<ref>Hepokoski, p. 56</ref> Verdi and his wife left Milan on 2 March; Ricordi encouraged the composer to go to the planned Rome performance of 14 April, to maintain the momentum and excitement that the opera had generated. The Verdis, along with Boito and Giulio Ricordi, attended together with [[King Umberto I]] and other major royal and political figures of the day. The king introduced Verdi to the audience from the Royal Box to great acclaim, "a national recognition and apotheosis of Verdi that had never been tendered him before", notes Phillips-Matz.<ref>Phillips-Matz, pp. 717–720</ref>
[[File:Adolfo Hohenstein - Poster for first French production of Giuseppe Verdi's Falstaff.jpg|thumb|Poster for the Paris première of 1894, by [[Adolfo Hohenstein]].]]
During these early performances Verdi made substantial changes to the score. For some of these he altered his manuscript, but for others musicologists have had to rely on the numerous full and piano scores put out by Ricordi.<ref name=h83 /> Further changes were made for the Paris premiere in 1894, which are also inadequately documented. Ricordi attempted to keep up with the changes, issuing new edition after new edition, but the orchestral and piano scores were often mutually contradictory.<ref name=h83 /> The Verdi scholar James Hepokoski considers that a definitive score of the opera is impossible, leaving companies and conductors to choose between a variety of options.<ref name=h83>Hepokoski, p. 83</ref> In a 2013 study Philip Gossett disagrees, believing that the autograph is essentially a reliable source, augmented by contemporary Ricordi editions for the few passages that Verdi omitted to amend in his own score.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Gossett|first=Philip|author-link=Philip Gossett|jstor=10.1525/jams.2013.66.1.103|title=Some Thoughts on the Use of Autograph Manuscripts in Editing the Works of Verdi and Puccini|journal=[[Journal of the American Musicological Society]]|date=Spring 2013|volume=66 |issue=1 |pages=103–128}} {{subscription required}}</ref>

The first performances outside the Kingdom of Italy were in [[Trieste]] and Vienna, in May 1893.<ref name=h129 /> The work was given in the Americas and across Europe. The Berlin premiere of 1893 so excited [[Ferruccio Busoni]] that he drafted a letter to Verdi, in which he addressed him as "Italy's leading composer" and "one of the noblest persons of our time", and in which he explained that "''Falstaff'' provoked in me such a revolution of spirit that I can&nbsp;... date [to the experience] the beginning of a new epoch in my artistic life."<ref>Beaumont (1987), pp. 53–54.</ref> [[Antonio Scotti]] played the title role in [[Buenos Aires]] in July 1893; [[Gustav Mahler]] conducted the opera in [[Hamburg]] in January 1894; a Russian translation was presented in St Petersburg in the same month.<ref name=h76 /> Paris was regarded by many as the operatic capital of Europe, and for the production there in April 1894 Boito, who was fluent in French, made his own translation with the help of the Parisian poet Paul Solanges.<ref name=h76>Hepokoski, pp. 76–77</ref> This translation, approved by Verdi, is quite free in its rendering of Boito's original Italian text. Boito was content to delegate the English and German translations to [[William Beatty-Kingston]] and [[Max Kalbeck]] respectively.<ref name=h76 /> The London premiere, sung in Italian, was at Covent Garden on 19 May 1894. The conductor was [[Luigi Mancinelli]], and Zilli and Pini Corsi repeated their original roles. Falstaff was sung by Arturo Pessina; Maurel played the role at Covent Garden the following season.<ref>"Performance History", programme booklet, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 6 December 1999, p. 43</ref> On 4 February 1895 the work was first presented at the [[Metropolitan Opera]], New York;<ref name=k461>Kimbell, p. 461</ref> Mancinelli conducted and the cast included Maurel as Falstaff, [[Emma Eames]] as Alice, [[Zélie de Lussan]] as Nannetta and [[Sofia Scalchi]] as Mistress Quickly.<ref>[https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1895/02/05/106078424.pdf "Verdi's great ''Falstaff''], ''The New York Times'', 5 February 1895</ref>