Falstaff (opera) to think of "Falstaff" as a work that has a certain Englishness. In fact the opera is no more English than "Aida" is Egyptian. Boito and Verdi between them transformed the fat knight into one of the archetypes of "opera buffa"." Verdi himself, however, felt that the Falstaff of the opera is not a conventional Italian "buffo" character, but portrays Shakespeare's fuller, more ambiguous Falstaff of the "Henry IV" plays: "My Falstaff is not merely the hero of "The Merry Wives of Windsor", who is simply a buffoon, and allows himself to be tricked by the women, but also the
Giuseppe Verdi fact, I must have—a grandiose, impassioned and original subject." The result was "Les vêpres siciliennes", and the scenarios of "Simon Boccanegra" (1857), "Un ballo in maschera" (1859), "La forza del destino" (1862), "Don Carlos" (1865) and "Aida" (1872) all meet the same criteria. Porter notes that "Un ballo" marks an almost complete synthesis of Verdi's style with the grand opera hallmarks, such that "huge spectacle is not mere decoration but essential to the drama...musical and theatrical lines remain taut [and] the characters still sing as warmly, passionately and personally as in "Il trovatore"." When the composer Ferdinand Hiller asked Verdi