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Like its title character, the Metropolitan Opera’s old production of Verdi’s Falstaff was a tattered relic­. Leonard Bernstein conducted the opening of Franco Zeffirelli’s staging in 1964, which popped out of storage from time to time for the next half-century. Finally, though, the director Robert Carsen has given the Met — and the four other co-commissioning companies — a fresh and vibrant vehicle for the role’s preeminent interpreter, Ambrogio Maestri. Suddenly, these are the good old days.Directors love to drag operas back and forth across the centuries, and Carsen has chosen to set this one in the reign of Elizabeth II instead of Elizabeth I. The libretto survives the jump just fine, and the backdrop of postwar London intensifies the friction between wild comedy and an autumnal haze of sadness. Waking in a musty hotel (nicely wood-paneled by set designer Paul Steinberg), Sir John appears, first in long...