“The truth is that instead of Otello being an Italian opera written in the style of Shakespeare, Othello is a play written by Shakespeare in the style of Italian opera.” (G.B. Shaw)
The Festspielhaus Baden-Baden can be counted among the most important and closest partners of the MCO. Alongside the many concert programmes of the last years, the orchestra has performed in a number of notably successful opera productions. Claudio Abbado has naturally conducted several of them, including Die Zauberflöte and Fidelio, but other conductors such as Mark Minkowski (Le Nozze di Figaro, Die Entführung aus dem Serail), Simone Young (Fidelio), and Thomas Hengelbrock (Der Freischütz) have also led the MCO at this venue. In September of 2010, under the baton of Daniel Harding, the orchestra will play a concert version of Verdi’s opera Otello . The three main roles will be sung by Ben Heppner (Otello), Anja Harteros (Desdemona) and Franco Vassallo (Jago). The performance will be recorded by WDR (West German Radio).
In 1887, fifteen years after the world premiere of Aida, Giuseppe Verdi unexpectedly announced the completion of a new opera. The Italian composer had become disillusioned politically and artistically, had retreated to his country house, and had dedicated himself to the management of his property and holdings. He wished to have nothing more to do with opera: as he explained in a letter to the Countess Maffei in 1878, „I would only have to hear the critiques again, that I can’t compose and that I’m a Wagner lackey.“ His publisher, Giulio Ricordi, nonetheless tried to reawaken Verdi’s interest in opera with all manner of tricks, and in fact eventually accomplished the goal with Arrigo Boito’s libretto for Otello. At first Verdi hesitated to take up his pen again, although he was struck by the quality of the libretto. The reasons for his reluctance appear to be complex, as his letter to Franco Faccio at the beginning of 1880 reveals (he had first received a copy of Boito’s work on Otello in June of the previous year): „The audience has been led astray and no longer loves the theatre with the devotion of earlier times. It has been seduced by slogans that are as grand as they are meaningless and the public drinks up dull nonsense elsewhere now, under the title, ‚Great Art.’“ Verdi quarrelled with opera and its contemporary formal constraints, he quarrelled with theatrical practices and he quarrelled with the public, which he called „ignorant“, „moody“ and „unfair“. He had not, however, entirely renounced the genre: not only did he conduct some of his own operas during these years, but he also subjected his earlier works, Simon Boccanegra and Don Carlos, to thorough revisions. Only a very few people in his circle of acquaintance were even aware that he had additionally taken up working on Otello, and those who did know could hardly have guessed that with Otello, Verdi would create one of the high points of Nineteenth Century opera.
On a formal level, many features of Otello refer back to inherited and traditional structures of romantic Italian opera: an introduction with the entrance of the hero framed by choruses; duets that close both the first and second acts; a „preghiera“ (prayer) for the heroine; and a final (double) death scene. All of these conventions of the genre make their appearances, and yet the composer also consciously undercuts them; the literature describes this as ‚decomposition.’ One may consider Verdi’s treatment of the arias as an example: though clearly separated from one another, they are nonetheless musically so tied in to the whole that the progression of the plot is rendered more consistent and more dramaturgically plausible. In the same context, it also becomes clear to what extent Boito’s libretto is ingeniously suited to being set to music (and vice versa?). Boito reduced Shakespeare’s tragedy – woven from myriad strands into an enormously complex structure – by around two thirds, down to its essence. Here it is a drama of jealousy, concentrated purely on the trinity of Otello, Desdemona and Jago, whose avowal of wholehearted evil (the famous Credo) made opera history. The three roles are considered among the most challenging and sophisticated in the repertoire. Indeed the orchestra is granted a particular significance. Verdi wrote for what were then new instruments, whose sound refined the ensemble playing and thus generated greater dramatic depth. Each instrument is used to deploy a specific musical idiom. The orchestra itself takes on not an accompanying but rather an actively creative role.
With Otello Verdi achieved a true musical tragedy. In contrast to many other composers, he ascribed the same importance to the libretto, the dramaturgy of the story and to character development that he assigned to music. As the conventional style of Italian opera – the parade of ‚numbers’ (which, in any case, threatened the genre with atrophy) – was abhorrent to him, he sought a way to develop what he found to be true musical theatre. He realized this ideal in Otello and was able at the same time to formulate an adequate response to Richard Wagner, whose notion of the gesamtkunstwerk had so deeply influenced opera across Europe. Many contemporaries of Verdi believed that he had gone too far: he was stung by the rebuke of ‚Wagnerianism’, just as he had predicted. It emerged from many corners, despite the triumphant premiere in February of 1887 at La Scala and an equally successful series of performances in Europe and New York.
This upcoming performance is part of a tour that takes the MCO from Baden-Baden (Sept. 30) to Luxemburg (Oct. 3), Dortmund (Oct. 6) and finally to Paris (Oct. 9). You can find further information about those concerts by clicking on the corresponding dates on the calendar page.
Two days after the Otello, another very special MCO concert event will take place in Baden-Baden, featuring the world premiere of Toshio Hosokawa’s oratorio Sternlose Nacht (Starless Night) together with Das Lied von der Erde of Gustav Mahler, under the baton of Kent Nagano (Oct. 2.).
