living in a glass house without being able to see in
or out
by
Douglas Messerli
Arrigo
Boito (libretto, from Shakespeare’s play as translated by Giulio Carcano and
Victor Hugo), Giuseppe Verdi (composer) Otello / The Metropolitan Opera HD live
production, October 17, 2015
Life
in late 19th Cyprus is truly a communal affair—at least as imagined
by director Bartlett Sher and set designer Es Devlin in the MET’s recent
production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello.
Indeed the opera begins with a grand community event, the island’s citizens
gathered, apparently in a heavy rain, to watch the return of their governor and
general of the Venetian fleet as it attempts to find its way into safe harbor
in a tempestuous storm. Despite temporary fears that the ship has been ripped
apart, the Moor Otello (performed sans
blackface in this production by Aleksanders Anntonenko) steers his vessel into
port, announcing that he and his soldiers have been victorious in their fight
against the Muslim Turks.
In his absence, the young Venetian Roderigo
(Chad Shelton) has arrived in Cyprus, and promptly fallen in love with Otello’s
new wife, Desdemona (Sonya Yoncheva), who has also joined the awaiting crowd
for Otello’s return.
So begins the long series of downward-spiraling
incidents, triggered by Iago’s intimations and outright lies, ending in Otello
killing of the woman he loves.
Iago, we know even from his own lips, is
simply evil, a man who believes in the basest values of all men, and with that
knowledge we readily perceive him—unlike Otello—as a kind of satan. But why can’t
Otello see through him.
Almost from the
first moment that Iago hints that something is going on between Cassio and Desdemona,
Otello is overwhelmed with jealousy and, from that moment on—despite his demand
for evidence—goes along with Iago’s presentation of an alternate universe, a
world into which one needs help to see clearly.
What Verdi’s opera seems to suggest is
that although Otello is a glorious military figure (in her last act Desdemona
even sings that her husband’s destiny is to be a figure of “glory,” while she a
figure doomed by “love”), the governor is not a particularly good leader—which
may also to be the opinion of the Venetian representative who recalls Otello
home to Venice, and plans to put Cassio in charge of Cyprus.
Increasingly, as Otello slips into madness
and Iago’s accusations against Desdemona become more and more absurd, his
relationship with the evil being seems more and more perverse. Instead of
turning to the being of honesty and truth whom he has married, Otello would
rather marry (in its meaning of “uniting with” or “joining”) with Iago, where
small signs and tokens (the sight of Cassio laughing about a woman, the
appearance of a handkerchief) matter more than observing what is evident.
If the transparently innocent Desdemona
is willfully destroyed in the process, the equally innocent Cassio claims his
right to rule by killing Roderigo, restoring the light to which Otello has been
blind.
Los Angeles,
October 19, 2015
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