OTELLO

Opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi with a libretto by A. Boito, based on William Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice
First performed at the Teatro alla Scala of Milan on the 5th of February 1887

Musical productionl Teatro Cervantes de Málaga
Stage production Teatro Principal de Palma

Otello JORGE DE LEON
Desdemona ROCIO IGNACIO
Iago CARLOS ALVAREZ
Cassio LUIS PACETTI
Emilia MARIFE NOGALES
Lodovico FRANCIS TOJAR
Roderigo GERARDO LOPEZ
Montano ISAAC GALAN

Orquesta Filarmonica de Malaga
Coro de Opera de Malaga

Stage director Alfonso Romero
Chorus director Salvador Vazquez
Conductor Marco Guidarini

3.20 h (w/intermission)

Supported by INAEM
(Instituto Nacional de las Artes Escenicas y de la Musica)
With the collaboration of UNICAJA FUNDACION

From the beginning of his career, Giuseppe Verdi sought to create "musical drama"; in other words, to create works with a perfect mixture of music and theatricality. For 16 years after Aida, Verdi matured the idea but did not write any operas. He finally succeeded in achieving this stylistic blend with Othello (1887), his last opera. Arrigo Boito converted Shakespeare’s drama into a powerful libretto which Verdi intensified with a score that contains a fully original and modern orchestral discourse. For the first time in his work, Verdi did not use a closed structure of arias, duets and concertantes separated by recitatives, and traced a continuum in which the latter possess great texture, very often unprecedented dramatic and lyrical power, accompanied by significant instrumental enrichment in the orchestra.
In addition to enhancing the two main characters’ major traits – Othello’s tormented character and warlike ímpetus and Desdemona’s gentleness and sensuality -, text and music bestow on Lago more pronounced philosophical malice than in the original tragedy, converting him in the perfect encarnation of evil.
At the age of 73 Verdi achieved the perfect correspondence between music and drama with Othello and reached the summit of his creative maturity. This opera is the synthesis of his long career, and at the same time the point of departure of a new horizon that would culminate six years later with Falstaff.

Opera and Recitals 30th Opera Season