This fantastic production (by director Peter Kazaras, set designer Donald Eastman, and costume designer Cynthia Savage), which traveled widely around the country and was later replicated on the Seattle Opera mainstage, took its inspiration entirely from the Shakespearean theater—a bare wooden platform, with only such elements as were necessary to fire the imagination to complete each scene. A gorgeous ‘chair-y’ tree set the final scene in Windsor Forest. Early-arriving audience members saw the singer playing Falstaff put on his fat suit, about a half hour before the music began, as the performers got into character onstage; and everyone reacted with glee when he removed the fat suit, at the climax of the final fugue.