For Ambrogio Maestri, a bass-baritone, the title role of Verdi’s opera “Falstaff” has become nothing less than a second skin.

“On the days when I’m happy or sad, he takes on a different shape,” he said between rehearsals for the Paris Opera.

The Italian singer has performed the role about 400 times and in more than 20 different productions, he said. Falstaff, a gluttonous knight, is humiliated by the married women he courts, including Alice Ford, the ringleader of a plot to have him thrown into the Thames River. His latest performances have been at the Opéra Bastille in Paris, reprising Dominique Pitoiset’s classic 1999 staging.

He will return to “Falstaff” at La Scala in Milan from Jan. 16 to Feb. 7 for the Giorgio Strehler production, in which he first appeared as the character in 2001.

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But Maestri, 54, does not live only for comedy. He has also plunged into the psyche of Scarpia, the sinister police chief in Puccini’s “Tosca,” which he will take on in mid-October at the Hamburg State Opera in Germany and again in February at the Vienna State Opera.

He discussed his latest turn as Falstaff, and more, in a recent interview. The following conversation has been translated from Italian, edited and condensed.

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