Verdi's last opera has a sophisticated, vertiginous and mocking score.

Verdi's last opera and a comedy with a philosophical background, Falstaff leaves us with more than a laugh. Under the mask of the buffoon, it hides a lucid - and surprisingly current - portrait of opportunism, vanity and power strategies that also circulate in the business world.

In the vast universe of opera, the characters not only embody intense emotions and timeless conflicts; they also project archetypes that, despite their historical origin, dialogue with disturbing lucidity with the realities of the present. From Macbeth's boundless ambition to Carmen's indomitable determination, these figures serve as a mirror of the human condition, reflecting virtues, weaknesses and contradictions that resonate beyond the stage. In particular, some of these characters today find an unexpected echo in the business world, where ethical dilemmas, the game of appearances and the struggle for power continue to mark the diary.

Falstaff, inspired by The Merry Wives of Windsor and fragments ofHenry IV, was written when Giuseppe Verdi was in his eighties. Perhaps intuitively or with the lucid awareness of one who is saying goodbye in fullness, the composer decided -with deliberate artistic intention- that his last word would not be a requiem, but a laugh. With the complicity of librettist Arrigo Boito, Verdi broke new ground and challenged those who, like Rossini, doubted his capacity for comedy. The result was a sophisticated, vertiginous and mocking score, topped off with a choral fugue that declares, without anesthesia, that "everything in the world is a joke", a phrase that could well be framed in the office of a top executive.

The stage creature in question, Sir John Falstaff, is an aging knight, hedonist, braggart and brilliant manipulator; he is much more than a decadent buffoon. Through his figure is constructed an incisive satire on the dynamics of power, unbridled ambition and the obsession for staff profit, themes that, far from belonging to the past, are still present in multiple forms in today's corporate world.

Falstaff does not pursue conquests for love or noble ideals. His driving force is rather pragmatic: to obtain resources and comforts through deception, disguise, and pretense. He acts more like a small businessman of deception than a romantic seducer: he devises a plan to woo two married women for clearly lucrative purposes, not for passion, but for their fortunes, he delegates to his faithful cronies the most uncomfortable tasks, turning them into collaborators who execute the dirty work while he preserves the appearance of an ingenious gentleman. And at the end, in the third act, after having been humiliated, he insists on the same outline with unproductive tenacity, faithful to a logic of immediate benefit disguised as theatricality.

His behavior, although caricatured, sharply portrays certain profiles that also circulate in the upper echelons of power: characters who cultivate a skillful rhetoric, master the art of persuasion and know how to adapt to the environment, as long as it means a staff advantage. In Falstaff, artifice becomes a method of survival, but also a symbol of a culture where appearance is more important than authenticity.

His real interest is not affection, but access: to the house, to the table, to his pocket. Falstaff does not want love, he wants liquidity.

The opera's denouement - in which the protagonist is mocked and publicly exposed - contains a lesson that never loses its relevance: masks, however brilliant they may be, eventually fall. The final scene, marked by general laughter and the famous chorus Everything in the world is a joke, not only closes the plot with humor, but also offers a poignant reflection: when ego and greed prevail over honesty, the outcome can hardly be virtuous.

However, it would be a mistake to reduce Falstaff to a simple villain or a buffoon condemned to scorn. His complexity lies precisely in his ambiguity. Falstaff is neither cruel nor vengeful; he is, above all, a witty survivor, the owner of an overflowing vitality and a wit that allows him to laugh even at himself. His famous final phrase -which closes the opera- contains a profound Philosophy , although expressed in a farcical tone: Life is a game of appearances; we are all objects and subjects of this great human comedy.

In that sense, we could say that Falstaff also embodies an alternative form of leadership, more chaotic, yes, but also freer and less constrained. It is this ability to destabilize that makes Falstaff an unexpectedly inspiring figure. Although his methods are not ethically exemplary, his qualities - resilience, inventiveness, the ability to improvise and relativize the established - are, in many cases, the same qualities we see today in the profile disruptive and innovative leaders. In their disobedience there is creativity; in their brazenness, an invitation to rethink the limits of what is permitted. In a world where masks abound and where efficiency often takes precedence over ethics, Falstaff continues to remind us that, sooner or later, every farce is revealed. And that in that revelation, even if it is wrapped in laughter, the dignity and future of leadership are also at stake.