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Verdi opera with desdemona11/14/2022 ![]() ![]()
As for Iago, the sudden pianissimo as he warns Otello of jealousy, and the curl of the lip as he recounts Cassio’s supposed dream, are but two instances of the way Leonard Warren acts with his voice. Vinay is even more moving than he was for Toscanini. #Verdi opera with desdemona full#The Act 1 choruses are vivid the brass is menacing as Otello waits to eavesdrop on Iago and Cassio and the full orchestra, tutta forza, at the smothering of Desdemona is stupendous. Fritz Busch’s conducting is immensely exciting. Less familiar is the version from the Met, broadcast a year later. Two unusual features are the use of solo voices in the scene with the children and (even harder to justify) the cellos doubling the double basses at the octave when Otello enters to murder his wife. Giuseppe Valdengo’s Iago is not quite of this calibre neither is Herva Nelli, who runs out of puff at the end of Desdemona’s first sentence. Toscanini coached Vinay in the part, and the singer repaid his mentor with a performance of searing intensity. The conducting is electric, it goes without saying. ![]() The famous one is Arturo Toscanini’s, assembled from NBC broadcasts in 1947. There’s a live 1955 recording from Covent Garden under Kubelík (9/06 available on iTunes and elsewhere as a download), but here we will focus on three earlier ones, of which two are outstanding. #Verdi opera with desdemona professional#He began his professional career as a baritone, and it’s the baritonal darkness of his voice that informs his recorded performances. The leading Otello in the years immediately after the Second World War was the Chilean tenor Ramón Vinay. Lawrence Tibbett is a subtle, understated Iago. He starts the first phrase of the love duet a bit flat – as does Fusati, come to that – but soon improves. There’s plenty of fire to Ettore Panizza’s conducting – Otello’s smothering of Desdemona is as vivid as Fafner clubbing Fasolt to death in Das Rheingold – but the USP is the chance to hear Giovanni Martinelli, the reigning Otello of the day. Almost as good, but in variable sound, is the broadcast from the New York Met in 1938. There’s a weedy cor anglais in Act 4, but overall this is well worth hearing. Like many of his successors, Fusati misaccentuates the opening phrase of Otello’s monologue in Act 3: this may have soon become common practice, but it’s correct on the Toscanini recording – and Toscanini played in the orchestra at the premiere. Nicola Fusati and Apollo Granforte as Otello and Iago are imprecise with their rhythm, but Fusati has ringing top notes and Granforte colours his tone to excellent effect. Carlo Sabajno gets disciplined singing from the chorus in Act 1 (‘Vittoria!’ and ‘Fuoco di gioia!’). Our first recording comes from La Scala in 1931/32, and it’s astonishingly good for its age. The part of Otello has been one of the pinnacles of the tenor repertoire ever since but it’s worth noting that until a very late stage the opera was to be called Iago. The cast was led by Francesco Tamagno, who had previously sung Gabriele Adorno in the revised Simon Boccanegra and the title-role in the four-act Don Carlo. The premiere at La Scala, Milan, on February 5, 1887, was a huge success. Boito, a composer himself, produced a superb, taut libretto that improved on the original by, among other things, dropping Shakespeare’s Act 1 and setting the entire action in Cyprus. For Verdi living on to compose Otello we have to thank Giulio Ricordi, his publisher, who planted the idea in 1879, and Arrigo Boito, the librettist: between them they played the initially dubious Verdi with infinite tact and encouragement. We have God to thank for Verdi living on. How would posterity rate Verdi if he, too, had died in 1883? It’s possible that without the final operatic masterpieces, Otello and Falstaff, his reputation would rest primarily on the Requiem of 1874. ![]() ![]() Wagner died at the age of 69 in 1883 Verdi was 87 when he died in 1901. Verdi and Wagner were almost exact contemporaries, born a few months apart in 1813. To find the perfect subscription for you, simply visit: .uk/subscribe #Verdi opera with desdemona archive#Subscribing to Gramophone is easy, you can choose how you want to enjoy each new issue (our beautifully produced printed magazine or the digital edition, or both) and also whether you would like access to our complete digital archive (stretching back to our very first issue in April 1923) and unparalleled Reviews Database, covering 50,000 albums and written by leading experts in their field. We have been writing about classical music for our dedicated and knowledgeable readers since 1923 and we would love you to join them. ![]()
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