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"Everything in the world is a jest . . . We make each other crazy, all of us. But he who laughs well has the last laugh." - Sir John Falstaff

Over the four years Giuseppe Verdi needed to craft Falstaff, his final - and, some experts say, most masterful - opera, the Italian composer called his main character "Big Belly." Writing music for Big Belly and his cohorts - characters created by William Shakespeare - brightened Verdi's old age.

This week, Big Belly will introduce himself to Toledo and demonstrate in one of the finest comic operas of all time what the term "larger than life" can mean.

Now in preparation to launch Toledo Opera's 51st season, Falstaff already has them rolling in laughter - and that's just the singers and crew. Stage director James Marvel says his approach is broad, very broad.

"It will be one of the funniest Falstaffs ever done in the history of opera," promised Marvel during a rehearsal last week as principals squirmed around on the sixth floor of the Secor Building where the opera's headquarters are located.

Performances are set for 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Nov. 13 and 2 p.m. Nov. 15 in the Valentine Theatre.

Not only does Verdi's only successful comic opera boast a bubbling, complex, and fast-paced score, but, in Toledo, it will offer an abundance of sight gags, pratfalls, double entendres, and other shticks for a cast ready to show its playful side.

"It's an amazing thing to have a piece that's so human yet also comedic," says baritone Scott Bearden, who will introduce himself to Toledo audiences in the title role.

"People give credit to Shakespeare but this is genius - and it's Italian to boot," he adds. (Sung in Italian, the opera's intricate plot twists and characters will be made clear in English supertitles.)

Sir John Falstaff's oversize girth symbolizes his ego and his insatiable appetite for wine, women, and victuals. If his financial cushion matched his fanny, the over-the-hill knight would be sitting pretty. But no, his purse is as lean as his girth is ample.

Shakespeare created this archetypal jester for his 16th century comedy, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and brought him back for Henry IV, Parts I and II.

Some two centuries later, Italians Verdi and his librettist, Arrigo Boito, endowed the character with larger-than-life magnetism and a complexity the Bard never managed.

The plot bounces along on the free-spending Sir John's efforts to raise personal funds by wooing wealthy wives. Those same merry wives counter with outrageous ruses. The plot thickens to a Falstaffian high when husbands, lovers, knaves, servants, and a cranky doctor add their own machinations.

It's not that his character is a bad man, Bearden explains, but "he's a bully, an opportunist, one who takes himself very seriously." Still, Bearden says thoughtfully, "Falstaff is a knight, so he must have done something right."

Bearden, who has a master's degree from Manhattan School of Music, won both first prize and audience prize in the 2008 Irene Dalis Vocal Competition in San Jose, Calif. He sang the same role at Tanglewood under the baton of Seiji Ozawa for the Massachusetts music center's 60th anniversary season in 2000.

"I try to inhabit a character," Bearden noted, adding with a grin, "My father said, 'It's not much of a stretch.' "

But no one in the large cast is immune to the temptation to have fun at another's expense.

Falstaff's cronies Bardolfo (Jeffrey Tucker), Pistola (Jamin Flabiano), and Dr. Caius (John Tiranno) are variously lowlifes and professionals who share a shortage of scruples.

The Merry Wives - Alice Ford (soprano Barbara Shirvis), Meg Page (soprano Priti Gandhi), and Dame Quickly (mezzo Margaret Lattimore) - all will collect their pound of flesh from Sir John.

Only the young lovers, Nanetta Ford (Joanna Mongiardo), and Fenton (Michele Angelini) seem immune to the pleasure of plotting for another's embarrassment - at least until Act III.

TOA artistic director Renay Conlin says "Other Verdi operas are more difficult vocally, but Falstaff requires a good ensemble, people who are good musicians as well as actors."

Shirvis, who has performed in Toledo in Pagliacci and Romeo et Juliette, loves the contrast in this role from more typical soprano characters.

"It's musically much more intricate but it doesn't involve sustained singing," she says, adding with a grin, "It's a nice change of pace from my usual droopy aria followed by an untimely demise."

Thomas Conlin will conduct the Toledo Symphony in the Valentine pit.

Toledo Opera's production of "Falstaff" will open at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and repeat at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 13 and 2 p.m. Nov. 15 in the Valentine Theatre. Tickets are $30-$95 at 419-246-8000 or toledoopera.org.

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