Verdi: Otello / Vickers, Freni, Karajan

Jon Vickers (Otello), Mirella Freni (Desdemona), Peter Glossop (Iago), Berliner Philharmoniker, Herbert von Karajan

Verdi: Otello

Verdi composed his towering penultimate opera when he was in his seventies. With a libretto brilliantly adapted by Arrigo Boito from Shakespeare’s tragedy of the Moor of Venice, this compelling work moves with alarming speed as Otello, the great general and statesman, is manipulated by his nihilistic ensign Iago into believing that his beloved young wife, Desdemona, has been unfaithful with the officer Cassio. After a spectacular storm, Otello enters with a triumphant cry of ‘Esultate’, establishing the heroic vocal stature of the role. The love duet he shares with Desdemona is the most blissful that Verdi ever wrote, and the couple’s last moment of happiness together before Iago’s evil – expressed in his chilling ‘Credo’ – begins to take effect. Among the score’s most powerful moments are Otello’s ‘Ora e per sempre addio’ as jealousy starts to destroy his world, and the duet of vengeance with Iago which follows soon afterwards. His traumatic Act III confrontation with Desdemona leads into a grandly conceived scene of public humiliation for both of them. Act IV brings Desdemona’s doom-laden Willow Song and Ave Maria before her murder and Otello’s suicide. To a yearning theme first heard in the love duet, he kisses his wife for the last time.