It was a front-of-curtain apology any opera company manager would have been delighted to make: "Roberto de Candia has had to withdraw due to a knee injury. The title role will be sung by Bryn Terfel." Most of us in the jam-packed Milton Keynes Theatre had known for some days that the leading bass-baritone of his generation would be making this one bonus appearance as Falstaff, a part he had been singing to huge acclaim earlier in WNO's tour. There were some, however, for whom it came as a delightful surprise to find they were to be seeing Terfel as the character some critics had said he'd been born to play.

This was, I feel sure, a compliment concerned with his impressive stature and magnificent voice rather than any supposed taste for wine, women, song - and, of course, food. All these powerful appetites, however, were presented by Terfel in graphic, riveting detail in a performance that those of us priviliged to witness it are unlikely ever to forget. I have seen many depictions of Falstaff over 40 years, in Shakepeare's plays and in this opera, but none that has so well caught the grandeur and glory of the man.

In some ways librettist Arrigo Boito outdid Shakespeare by introducing into The Merry Wives of Windsor - the somewhat trifling play on which the opera is based - elements of the character of the Fat Knight, chiefly his super-abundant wit, that are found in the Henry IV plays. This applies particularly to relations with his rebellious companions Bardolph (Neil Jenkins) and Pistol (Julian Close). Thus it is that one comes to feel a proper measure of pity for his predicament after his double-pronged assault on the sexual continence of Mistresses Ford (Janice Watson) and Page (Imelda Drumm) is so cruelly rebuffed.

All singing perfomances were of the highest order under conductor Michal Klauza, with exeptionally fine work from Oxford-based Christopher Purves as the furiously jealous Ford and Claire Ormshaw as his feisty daugher Nannetta, determined to defy her dad over her chosen beau Fenton (Rhys Meirion).

Terfel himself sang the role of Ford (though not in Oxford) the last time this production of Falstaff (director Peter Stein) toured in 1993. Nannetta was played by the delightful soprano Nuccia Focile and Fenton by Paul Charles Clarke. Fifteen years on, Ms Focile (now Mrs Paul Charles Clarke) showed herself still well able to portray ardent, headstrong youth in last week's revival of the company's four-year-old production (director James Macdonald) of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin.

Baritone Garry Magee shone in the title role, perfectly showing the bored disdain with which he rejects Tatyana's clumsy advances - Focile's letter scen was spellbinding - and the anguish he feels when he, in turn, is spurned by her. Tenor Paul Charles Clarke was on suitably fiery form as Lensky, the doomed lover of Tatyana's sister Olga (Alexandra Sherman).