Otello [Blu-ray]

Otello has fared relatively well on DVD. Domingo has three productions: ROH, Scala and the Met. He is also in a film courtesy of Zefferelli which can be ignored in view of the lip-synching and cuts to the score. Vickers has two, a Karajan film and the Met production from 1978 which is a stunning performance and commands the best Desdemona, Renata Scotto. There is also a production with Cura which I have not heard and an antiquity from RAI with Del Monaco which is self recommending for those fans who are willing to put up with zero production values and lip synching. In the interests of completeness, there is a set directed by Barenboim out of Berlin. I admit to knowing nothing as to the merits or demerits of this set.This most recent taping is from Salzburg (and even with criticisms which muist be made) is highly competitive with the above sets featuring Domingo and Vickers. Even though we live in an era of the star conductor (and surely Muti is that)the cover of the set doesn't feature him nor does the camera linger on him during the performance (compare to Solti and his Salzburg Frosch). But he he clearly the star along with the great Vienna Philharmonic: they play as if possessed. The textures of the score are clear and balanced and it is exciting hear them though never at the expense of the singers. Muti, of all the conductors, can stand comparison with Toscanini; from the very beginning he establishes the tempos and the tone of the performance. Thrilling.But what of the Otello? He is a young Latvian, aged 33 when the performance was taped; he had never sung the role before. It is a beautiful instrument, up to the demands of the role. One hopes, however, that he will put the role away for several years and sing the other Verdi tenor roles for which there is no tenor currently available. Yes, I know Licitra, Alvarez and Giordani sing these roles, but in my opinion they are merely stop gaps. Licitra is inconsistent from performance to performance as is Giordani; I have yet to hear either of them deliver a performance of distinction. Alvarez is pushing his essentially lyric tenor into the spinto rep; it remains to be seen how successful he is. Alagna's attemps in the spinto repertoire have not been successful and the velvety nap of his voice is worn as the most recent DVD of a very strange Orphee reveals. Antonenko has the vocal goods; he must learn to husband them if this is where he wants to spend his operatic time. What he doesn't have at aged 33 is the character and the soul of Otello; it certainly is not expressed in his face (or voice) and much of the camera work focuses on the artists. It was a risk for Muti to gamble on this very young singer in what is surely the most difficult tenor role and in spite of my reservations I think it has paid off.Desdemona is sung by Marina Poplavskaya who represents the younger singers from the now discarded Soviet Union. She is clearly not Italian trained--no chest register--but she has recorded a Donna Anna from the ROH and subsequently performed in a Don Carlo (prima and first revival) excerpts which can be heard on YouTube. The Anna is a distinguished performance even though she was not well when the performance taped. I believe that her Desdemona was also a debut role for her. The voice is quite beautiful, intelligently used and she represents an asset to the lyric stage; more compelling than Te Kanawa and preferable to the somewhat self-absorbed Fleming though it must be said that she does sing beautifully.Carlos Alvarez is the Iago, somewhat dramatically mute but preferable to the hammy overacting indulged in by some baritones. Indeed he sings well and unless you prefer the aging Nucci and MacNeil or the Russian Leiferkus he is clearly the front runner. If there wern't such a paucity of Verdi sopranos and tenors he surely would have a larger career. As it is he seems to be heard only in Europe.For those with high end equipment and surround sound (and neighbors who are either sympathetic or slightly deaf) purchase of this set is a no-brainer. Even on my equipment I am aware of what I am not hearing. With the caveats mentioned above I find the set highly recommended.

As he did in Florence 1980 (Scotto, Cossutta, Bruson; audio, various labels) and Milan 2001 (Frittoli, Domingo, Nucci; DVD, first TDK, then reissued by Arthaus), Riccardo Muti at Salzburg 2008 opts for Verdi's 1894 Paris revision of the Act III concertato. His are the only performances in my library, audio or video, that make use of this rewrite. As was so often the case when Verdi revised a movement (e.g. the quartet and various duets in DON CARLOS), the gain is in concentration and clarity. The progress of Iago's machinations as he flits from pawn to pawn is more clearly focal, as his lines are brought into sharper relief, while Desdemona's contribution is significantly adjusted. It is an intelligent alternative that Muti must believe should be respected as the master's final word. But I confess to missing the sheer majesty of the more familiar grand sprawl we usually get in its place.As the doomed lovers at the heart of the tragedy, Aleksandrs Antonenko (b. 1975) and Marina Poplavskaya (b. 1977) demonstrate both the pros (energy and freshness) and cons (callowness) of casting young singers in this music. Antonenko's sound is pleasingly ripe, or still ripening; he handles very difficult music without apparent strain, and Muti elicits from him a remarkably clean, faithful reading. But he lacks something in stature. I've always thought it a vague, lazy criticism to say that someone's dramatic attitudes seem "externally applied," but I really felt that here. Antonenko seems to be acting the way he knows an Otello should act, rather than drawing on insights into emotional states that drive Otello to act in these ways. The performance is satisfying on a mechanical level without being fully convincing, and here I think Antonenko's obvious youth works against him. More recently, as Grigori/Dimitri in the Met's new BORIS GODUNOV, he might have been born to play his role. The Otello may be premature. The character's fear that his advancing age may be a factor driving Desdemona away, for example, does not resonate when expressed by Antonenko as it does in the video performances of Vickers and Domingo, who suggested greater gravitas overall. Without that gravitas -- without the feeling that we are seeing a great man in his maturity toppled by fatal insecurities -- Otello is just a ranting lout. The singing remains impressive, and one looks forward to hearing more from Antonenko. An apprenticeship in the Verdi roles that Domingo and Vickers sang prior to taking on Otello might be time well spent.Marina Poplavskaya is physically perfect for Desdemona, who ideally should be or at least seem younger than her on-stage husband. Poplavskaya has the right patrician blond beauty, and her face makes a terrific camera subject. This is true especially in the final act, in which the scene with Emilia is lit by candlelight, creating wonderful shadow play on the elegant contours of the soprano's features. Poplavskaya uses her eyes expressively and does "pensive" better than she does anything, and this serves her well in that long passage of ominous tranquility, the Willow Song and Ave Maria. Elsewhere, despite knowledge that she has been criticized for being "cold" and "remote," I felt precisely the opposite -- that in the happier times of Act I and II, she seemed too accessible, too contemporary. I had difficulty accepting her as the Boito/Shakespeare shimmering ideal, the paradise from which Otello falls. Less than a regal "lady," one whose passion for Otello compels her to her own end (the subtitling stupidly omits a brief but crucial exchange in which Desdemona refuses Lodovico's offer of shelter), she is only a frightened girl in trouble. Perhaps someone else will respond to this human/verité Desdemona better than I did. I found some of the expressions of horror more appropriate to, say, IL TABARRO. The voice is very beautiful, and isolated effects are haunting. One hopes the style and the command progress to be wholly worthy of the instrument.Carlos Álvarez can be a bland presence -- "a scowling stiff with a good voice," I meanly put it elsewhere -- but his bluntness actually serves him well as the almost elementally evil Iago of Boito, and specifically for the Iago of this production. His strong, focused singing and confident musicianship make him perhaps the best Iago on DVD (most of the others are unidiomatic, past their prime, or both). Smaller roles are nicely cast. Stephen Costello is a tremendous asset as a star-quality Cassio who makes Otello's jealousy quite plausible; Barbara Di Castri's Emilia is both lovely on its own terms and well contrasted with her mistress.Director Stephen Langridge and set designer George Souglides inflict wounds on the opera without killing it outright. These days, that's enough for a gentleman's "C." Souglides's set design has everyone hopping on and off of what looks like a giant glass coffee table. When Iago makes a big show of smashing the thing at the end of Act III, it's nearly character redemption. A sword is stuck in the stage for most of the opera, and the handle makes it look like a cross, and I was about to go on about the twin themes of violence and religion but I started to doze off. In the first act, Otello more or less "presents" to the revelers what I assume is supposed to be an adolescent boy of the vanquished Muslims, and "Fuoco di gioia" is taken up with four choral tarts sexually harassing him. They force his face into lewd positions on their own bodies and then push him away, laughing at him, like more aggressive Rhinemaidens. Confused and frightened, he tries to flee, but bully boys on the sidelines force him back for more. Then his hands are tied and a cloth sack is put over his head, and if writing about the symbolic sword/cross in the stage didn't put me to sleep, discussing the parallels between Cyprus and Abu Ghraib would finish me off for certain. (By the way, since Otello turns the kid over to these bitches and thugs before leaving the stage for a while, he presumably sanctions this nonsense. As if it isn't hard enough to keep an audience sympathetic to Otello for the latter three-fourths of the opera, Langridge has to start making us dislike him right after "Esultate!"?) The boy then is put to work as a servant in the palace, I believe, because he gets to be the only person who sees and hears Iago's monstrous gloating at the end of Act III. (What a shame that they would never listen to a little Muslim boy. Tragedy could have been averted. O, steep wages of intolerance.) Suffice to say, the opera goes best when Langridge stays out of the way and lets it take care of itself, as in Act IV. The costumes are attractive.The performance took place in August 2008, and from the looks of things, the air conditioning was out. Antonenko and Álvarez are frequently drenched, and the women probably are being rescued by their foundation. The camerawork is aggressively close, and not a bead of perspiration, an involuntary spray of spittle, or a saliva rope goes undocumented. The English subtitles would have been satisfactory in the VHS/LD era but are not up to the modern standard. Of course there must be condensation in the ensembles, but here there are curious lapses throughout the opera, in which lines go untranslated for no good reason.The strongest personality involved, of course, is that of Maestro Muti. This is "his" OTELLO, first to last. Reports from some attendees were that the orchestra (VPO) was teeth-rattlingly loud, and whether it was overwhelming in a good or a bad way was something of a split decision. The singers are not drowned out on the DVD, however, nor do they seem to be struggling to be heard. The Viennese have had a long and fruitful association with Muti, and they give him a magnificent and luxurious account of the score. But for all their virtuosity, I find them less idiomatic than the Scala forces on Muti's earlier DVD. That performance, documenting Domingo's farewell to the title role, suffers only from a vocally worn and somewhat plain Iago (the Salzburg one is preferable), and of course the sixtyish Domingo had to husband declining resources carefully. Those are small debits alongside Domingo's pathos and mature artistry, the chemistry between him and leading lady Barbara Frittoli, and the stunningly atmospheric and evocative orchestral playing of the Milanese (I've never heard a more hair-raising accompaniment to the Drinking Song, or winds in the Act IV prelude better balancing the deeply sad and the sinister).The 2001 Scala performance remains my first DVD choice in general, with a fleeting glance in the direction of Vickers and Scotto -- an equally moving duo in a less refined but effectively contrasting way -- on the recently released Met DVD of 1978.

Music is lovely. Listen weekly

Singing is wonderful but there are no subtitles! There is a subtitle menu but when i select English (or any other language) nothing appears. I am playing this on an Oppo 105 btw.

There has been a bit of carping and complaining from some quarters about this production, so I viewed it with very low expectations ... sweaty performers, uncomfortable closeups, a mono-dimensional angry and angrier Otello, etc. Ignore it, it's garbage. I've not actually seen other performances (have only heard the great Domingo & Studer recording, and Callas's glorious rendition of the first three arias of Act IV), but from a first time on video perspective, this is mind-blowing and I totally loved it. All of the power and passion was there. The performers looked and sounded fantastic. The camera work was arty and magnificent. The close ups worked. The singing was great. Highly recommended.

Si l'on a pu écrire justement à propos de ce chef d'œuvre : "il n'y a rien dans Otello que Rigoletto ne contienne déjà : l'ambition de transgresser les formes et les formules, de viser toujours plus de vérité, de force, d'unité, de liberté", la suprême qualité de cette représentation est de donner à cette analyse une véracité nouvelle car la fusion entre l'ancien et le moderne que réalise Otello dans l'histoire de l'art lyrique italien et dans l'histoire créative de Giuseppe Verdi y apparaît avec la force percutante d'une révélation.Révélation qui doit tout au chef Riccardo Muti et à l'orchestre de Vienne.La direction de Riccardo Muti allie la précision du scalpel et l’ampleur du souffle lyrique, la rigueur de l'architecture et la richesse du discours musical, depuis la tempête introductive qui fait déferler sur la scène son énergie tragique jusqu'à la résolution de la tragédie dans le dernier soupir d'Otello.L'orchestre de Vienne : je croyais l'avoir entendu à son sommet dans l'Otello dirigé par Herbert Von Karajan mais il est ici plus grand encore, à trembler sinon pleurer d'admiration, il y aurait trop d'exemples à donner mais s'il en fallait un, je choisirais la scène du "credo" de Iago déclamant son asservissement aux forces du mal : l'orchestre de Vienne y est tétanisant, ce n’est qu’un exemple d'une perfection inouïe qui m'a fait déplorer que ses musiciens restent sagement et modestement dans leur fosse au moment des applaudissements alors qu'ils méritent une ovation debout à défaut de génuflexions.La notice fournie avec le DVD nous apprend que Riccardo Muti a choisi de donner du grand ensemble du troisième acte la version que Giuseppe Verdi a révisée pour Paris (représentée le 12 octobre 1894).Mais cette notice ne propose pas l’explication d’un tel choix, ce qui rend l'information creuse, l'explication a pourtant son intérêt.Ce grand ensemble est en effet un défi : faire entendre en un seul tenant mais en toute clarté huit "paroles scéniques", celle du chœur et celles des sept personnages, principaux et secondaires, qu'elles soient solitaires ou couplées.Un défi dont Giuseppe Verdi n'ignorait pas le risque, celui de l'inaudible, auquel il a tenté de remédier dans sa version parisienne par un travail de simplification.Mais alors, et ce n’est pas une critique, juste une remarque, on peut regretter que Riccardo Muti n'ait pas retenu l'insertion dans le troisième acte du ballet obligatoire à Paris, un ballet pouvant certes paraître saugrenu en regard de la densité dramatique de cet acte mais dont l’exotisme scintillant produit l’effet bienvenu d’une diversion dans l’insoutenable, quand l'obligatoire prend les traits du volontaire tant ce ballet trouve un sens (cf. la version discographique d'Herbert Von Karajan qui l'inclut).Quoi qu'il en soit, Riccardo Muti et l'orchestre de Vienne placent constamment cette représentation sous le sceau de la grandeur.Et ils ne sont pas seuls.La mise en scène est remarquable.Dans une vision d’ensemble sobre, proche du dépouillement, ce sont les détails qui parlent.La ligne brisée sur le sol, jusqu'à la fracture, omniprésente, qui dit ce qui sépare et divise les protagonistes et qui est, à l'instant ultime, une allégorie de la désagrégation du héros brisé.Le placement des personnages sur l'espace scénique : Iago planqué épiant le couple pendant son duo nuptial ; Iago arrachant le mouchoir fatal à Emilia tandis que Desdemone s’évertue à rasséréner un Otello déjà au bord du gouffre de la folie ; Otello à l’agonie ne parvenant pas à atteindre Desdemone pour l’ultime baiser que seul l’orchestre lui donnera.Les gestes symboliques : les mains scarifiées et rougies de sang d'Otello et de Iago unis dans leur serment funeste ; Otello effondré qui se barbouille le visage avec une poignée de terre, image du retour à sa condition originelle d'esclave et de proscrit à laquelle le renvoie sa conviction atroce d'avoir perdu le salut venu de l'amour de Desdemone.L'éloquence émerge d'une économie subtile des procédés.Il est temps de parler des chanteurs...Grand Iago que celui de Carlos Àlvarez et seconds rôles excellemment tenus.Quant au couple slave qui incarne Otello et Desdemone : splendide, dans une redoutable prise de rôle pour lui comme pour elle.Elle que je connaissais, Marina Poplavskaya, lui que je ne connaissais pas, Aleksandrs Antonenko.Tous deux magnifiques, vocalement et physiquement.Beauté du timbre, technique et art du chant, pureté et puissance, engagement dramatique, lyrisme et prestance.Si Marina Poplavskaya s'affirme d'emblée comme une grande Desdemone, il est trop tôt à mon sens pour dire qu'Aleksandrs Antonenko est l'Otello du XXIème siècle à son commencement.Aleksandrs Antonenko m'a fascinée par la composition impressionnante de son personnage qu'il réalise avec des atouts naturels : sa beauté est ensemble celle d'un ange et d'une brute, sa stature d'athlète est surmontée par un visage d'enfant, son regard est clair et nuageux, un maquillage talentueux donne à ses yeux un surcroît de transparence et d'opacité mêlées, comme un reflet de la quête d'absolu détruite par la peur de perdre.Impressionnantes sont sa puissance et son autorité vocales dans ce rôle écrasant.Ce qui ne suffit pas à faire de lui Otello.Otello : animal blessé à mort qui hurle au dehors et qui sanglote "en dedans".Vulnérable, pathétique, anéanti, Otello est un archétype du héros tragique dans le chef d'œuvre de Giuseppe Verdi et d'Arrigo Boïto, bien plus que dans la pièce de William Shakespeare.Aleksandrs Antonenko doit encore y réfléchir mais il a tout le temps...Il donne déjà ici tous les gages d'une incarnation majeure, des plus prometteuses, avant une incarnation transcendante qui viendra sûrement, plus tard.Il reste que cette représentation est placée sous le sceau de la grandeur.

Un Otello totalmente recomendable para quien quiera disfrutar de esta ópera. Gran intepretación de Plácido Domingo como Otello y una gran dirección musical de Riccardo Muti.

Fantastico

Placido Domingo and Jon Vickers were probably the best Otellos in the end of last centuries. And now we have this excellent young Antonenko, with the stamina, voice and technique to perform tis role as should be done. Then we have Marina Poplavskaya as a sweet beautiful Desdemona and Carlos Alvarez as a convincing Iago.This is one of the best Otellos in vídeo and the best of our times!