The plot revolves around the thwarted, sometimes farcical, efforts of the fat knight Sir John Falstaff to seduce two married women to gain access to their husbands' wealth.

After the initial performances in Italy, other European countries and the US, the work was neglected until the conductor Arturo Toscanini insisted on its revival at La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera in New York from the late 1890s into the next century.

Singers closely associated with the title role have included Victor Maurel (the first Falstaff), Mariano Stabile, Giuseppe Valdengo, Tito Gobbi, Geraint Evans, Bryn Terfel and Ambrogio Maestri.

[2] Many composers had set the play to music, with little success, among them Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf (1796), Antonio Salieri (1799), Michael William Balfe (1835) and Adolphe Adam (1856).

[6] The first version to secure a place in the operatic repertoire was Otto Nicolai's The Merry Wives of Windsor in 1849, but its success was largely confined to German opera houses.

As he observed at the time, he was not working on a commission from a particular opera house, as he had in the past, but was composing for his own pleasure: "in writing Falstaff, I haven't thought about either theatres or singers".

[27] By early 1891 he was declaring that he could not finish the work that year, but in May he expressed some small optimism, which by mid-June, had turned into: The Big Belly ["pancione", the name given to the opera before the composition of Falstaff became public knowledge] is on the road to madness.

For the title role he wanted Victor Maurel, the baritone who had sung Iago in Otello, but at first the singer sought contractual terms that Verdi found unacceptable: "His demands were so outrageous, exorbitant, [and] incredible that there was nothing else to do but stop the entire project".

[n 6] By September Verdi had agreed in a letter to his publisher Casa Ricordi that La Scala could present the premiere during the 1892–93 season, but that he would retain control over every aspect of the production.

An early February date was mentioned along with the demand that the house would be available exclusively after 2 January 1893 and that, even after the dress rehearsal, he could withdraw the opera: "I will leave the theatre, and [Ricordi] will have to take the score away".

[32] The public learned of the new opera towards the end of 1892, and intense interest was aroused, increased rather than diminished by the secrecy with which Verdi surrounded the preparations; rehearsals were in private, and the press was kept at arm's length.

[33] Apart from Verdi's outrage at the way that La Scala announced the season's programme on 7 December – "either a revival of Tannhäuser or Falstaff" – things went smoothly in January 1893 up to the premiere performance on 9 February.

[37] 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.

[39] 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.

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 ... date [to the experience] the beginning of a new epoch in my artistic life.

"[42] 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.

[43] 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.

[44] On 4 February 1895 the work was first presented at the Metropolitan Opera, New York;[45] Mancinelli conducted and the cast included Maurel as Falstaff, Emma Eames as Alice, Zélie de Lussan as Nannetta and Sofia Scalchi as Mistress Quickly.

But in comparison with every other work of the composer, it is wanting in tunes of a broad and impressive character, and one or two of the type of "O Mia Regina", "Ritorna Vincitor", or "Ora per sempre addio" might have helped the situation.

[51] When Karajan was in a position to do so he added Falstaff to the repertoire of his opera company at Aachen in 1941,[51] and he remained a proponent of the work for the rest of his career, presenting it frequently in Vienna, Salzburg and elsewhere, and making audio and video recordings of it.

[n 9] Among revivals in the 1950s and later, Hepokoski singles out as particularly notable the Glyndebourne productions with Fernando Corena and later Geraint Evans in the title role; three different stagings by Franco Zeffirelli, for the Holland Festival (1956), Covent Garden (1961) and the Metropolitan Opera (1964); and Luchino Visconti's 1966 version in Vienna.

When the innkeeper presents a bill for the wine, Falstaff tells Bardolfo and Pistola that he needs more money, and plans to obtain it by seducing the wives of two rich men, one of whom is Ford.

Falstaff, delighted at the prospect of being paid to seduce the wealthy and beautiful woman, agrees, and reveals that he already has a rendezvous arranged with Alice for two o'clock – the hour when Ford is always absent from home.

Falstaff withdraws to a private room to change into his finest clothes, and Ford, left alone, reflects on the evil of an uncertain marriage and vows to have revenge ("È sogno o realtà?"

Nannetta, as the Fairy Queen, instructs her helpers ("Sul fil d'un soffio etesio" / "On the breath of a fragrant breeze, fly, nimble spirits") before all the characters arrive on the scene.

[65] The critic Rodney Milnes comments that "enjoyment ... shines from every bar in its irresistible forward impulse, its effortless melody, its rhythmic vitality, and sureness of dramatic pace and construction.

"[66] In The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Roger Parker writes that: the listener is bombarded by a stunning diversity of rhythms, orchestral textures, melodic motifs and harmonic devices.

"[2] A contemporary critic argued that the text "imitated with marvellous accuracy the metre and rhythm of Shakespeare's verse",[21] but Hepokoski notes Boito's use of traditional Italian metric conventions.

[76] Among the solo numbers woven into the continuous score are Falstaff's "honour" monologue, which concludes the first scene, and his reminiscent arietta ("Quand'ero paggio") about himself as a young page.

For Osborne the nocturnal music of act 3 draws on the examples of Weber, Berlioz and Mendelssohn, creating a mood akin to that of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.