I found it strange last week at Milton Keynes to find a Falstaff rather smaller in girth than one of his rebellious sidekicks. It was like seeing a Richard III in which someone had a more prominent hump than the usurping Gloucester or a Cyrano beaten by a nose.

Yet, as the picture on the right shows, Jonathan Veira’s Sir John was easily beaten in bulk by Pistol as portrayed for Glyndebourne on Tour by Sion Goronwy. He was half of a double act, with Harry Nicoll’s Bardolph, reminiscent – in the suits and hats fitting to this production’s 1940s setting – of Laurel and Hardy.

Over Mr Goronwy’s performance, I realise, we were expected to be ‘size-blind’; whereas, in respect of Falstaff, his size is very much the point. He rejoices in it (or pretends he does); for everyone else, it helps make him a figure of fun.

Fun, of course, is what this wonderful opera is about. Verdi’s last stage work, and the only comedy of his maturity, it presents the farcelike antics of The Merry Wives of Windsor, while also giving us (through librettist Boito’s expert work) something of the nobler, more recognisably human Sir John seen in the two parts of Henry IV.

The dignity beneath the clowning was evident in Mr Veira’s performance as it had been in that of Oxford’s Christopher Purves whom I was lucky to see in the role during this summer’s Glyndebourne Festival.

Mr Veira’s exploration (under conductor Thomas Blunt) of the sparkling, near-Mozartian delights of the score found a match in the other vocal performances, especially those of Kathleen Wilkinson as that able fixer Mistress Quickly, Jessica Muirhead and Guido Loconsolo as the merry Alice Ford and her entertainingly jealous husband, and Rachael Lloyd as Sir John’s other fancy, Meg Page.

There was exceptionally sweet singing from Elena Tsallagova’s Nannetta and Nicholas Phan as her ardent swain Fenton.

In short, a triumph.