The first performance of Falstaff by Antonio Salieri was held on the 3rd of January 1799 in Vienna. This harmonic work, perfectly musically and dramatically balanced, with its risky (on the edge of impropriety) jokes, which were in no way inferior to Le nozze di Figaro by Mozart, had tremendous success. The plot of The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare became an ideal foundation for a classical opera buffa with its traditional disguises and transformations, love affairs and the final repentance of glutton and libertine, Falstaff. (The latter is a tribute to the moral ideals of the time of the Enlightenment, at the end of Shakespeare’s comedy the main character avoids the punishment.) Salieri and his co-author Defranceschi were the first to choose this Shakespearian plot for an opera libretto.