Otello

A monumental, late-career landmark, Verdi’s Otello ranks among the most potent adaptations of a Shakespeare tragedy for the opera stage. The Italian composer was in his early seventies and enjoying a celebrated retirement when his publisher, Giulio Ricordi, and the librettist Arrigo Boito challenged him to write an opera based on Shakespeare’s Othello. Boito devised a streamlined scenario that eliminates Shakespeare’s talky first act, while shifting some of the focus away from the Moorish general’s race. Verdi spent nearly seven years on the score, and in the process created a form similar to that used by Wagner: emphasising a sustained drama through each of the four acts, with limited scenic changes and the use of a leitmotif, dubbed the “kiss motif”. The curtain rises as a raging storm breaks on Cyprus and Otello returns victorious from battle. But another storm is brewing: Iago, Otello’s ensign, launches a venomous scheme to suggest that the general’s wife, the saintly Desdemona, is having an affair with Cassio. Iago’s machinations fuel Otello’s distrust and underscore a classic Verdian theme: the destructiveness of jealousy. The three leading roles are among Verdi’s most demanding, as demonstrated in the Act I love duet between Otello and Desdemona, in Iago’s villainous “Credo in un Dio crudel”, and in Desdemona’s stirring “Willow Song” and “Ave Maria”. The 1887 premiere at Milan’s La Scala was a critical and audience triumph.