Otello
ENO
Directed by David Alden
Shakespeare’s great tragedy of deception, love and jealousy sees the army general Otello and his new wife Desdemona destroyed by the manipulative Captain Iago. Set in a crumbling old castle, Otello’s tale of betrayed friendship is vividly brought to life through Verdi’s exquisite score which contains some of the composer’s most powerful and tender music.
This dramatic new ENO production celebrates the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth and is a co-production with The Royal Swedish Opera and Teatro Real, Madrid. It is directed by David Alde, returning to the London Coliseum following his recent triumphant production of Peter Grimes.
The staging by David Alden is grand but does very little. Inter-war early 20th-century period costumes and lots of grime set the scene, although atmospheric enough to suggest the back-story and action, we see nothing of this other than one or two grand moments when you get hints of Verdi’s mad attraction for huge set pieces. This limits the intimacy of the action and hollows out the grandness but does make one focus intently on the action on stage; at the final, vital scene it lets us down and makes it look like a street murder. I was expecting so much more from Alden’s direction but this felt unfocused and missing a vital connective element.
The house warmly welcomed Leah Crocetto as she made her debut as Desdemona, her warm lyrical voice pleasing the audience and giving her character some of the emotional purity and assertiveness lacking in her stage presence. Crocetto’s precise phrasing and range matches Skelton and reworked the relationship into one of equals, even to the murderous end. Stuart Skelton’s singing was superb, rising and falling through his emotional pitches with compelling musical mastery, but he never convinced me that he really cared. It’s odd to listen to such wonderful singing and yet be unconvinced by the emotional connection. A Caucasian Otello, with no obvious thing to make him ‘different’, also removed a large part of the motivation for the character’s feeling of always being an outsider, allowing his paranoid jealousy to inflate to such a monster. Makeup is only one way of suggesting a minority ethnic characteristic. This simple lack reduced the action to something altogether more domestically violent for me and this lessened the whole emotional impact.
Jonathan Summers’ Iago is a complete contrast, not one moment on stage is wasted, the man is a monster and Summers gives us a polished insight into this loathsome, desperate, manipulative person, showing us a bitter fearful broken man who is at heart an insecure coward and causes such destruction to those around him. It was such a pity that his voice failed to carry the majesty of his gripping stage presence, but tonight I was happy to forgive him, he was so compellingly, honestly horrid. Helen Stephen’s mouse-like Emilia is all nervous glances and brutalised wife and delightful to listen to; along with Allan Clayton’s drunken Cassio, she gave strong contrast to the tightly enclosed world of Otello and Desdemona.
The Chorus were breath-taking this evening, their full-force opening in the Storm was excellent. They are as sharp as a scalpel and just as ruthless in their precious assaults on the ears; I was deeply impressed by them and only wished for more than we got. The Act II chorus of Cypriots were off-stage, just leaving us the children and some dancers, a missed opportunity not to scythe us with their full-on magnificence. The entrance of the Venetian Ambassador was a perfect piece of grand theatre and, even though it had hints of Cecil Beaton, still carried real presence.
The dancers are strange, with earthly Butoh elements which gave them a pagan edge, and the obligatory children are used in a pointless way, although lighting designer Adam Silverman’s deft and sophisticated lighting makes a huge impact on scenes. It’s not often I enjoy the lighting almost as much as the action but Silverman’s use of shadow and highlights was engaging from the off. Arrigo Boito’s libretto ‘after Shakespeare’ was pert and direct and offered a lot of blunt, mean clarity; I enjoyed it hugely.
Edward Gardner’s conducting was thrilling, the opening storm clashing and flashing with real electric energy, he drove the orchestra to seriously impressive heights of achievement. He wove us an utterly compelling and convincing emotional tapestry this evening, ending with the fading crepuscular finale, you could feel the whole audience holding its breath.
This was a stark and emotionally harrowing production and one which will upset the purists and delight the Verdi lovers in equal measure. This is certainly an engaging production and one of the most thrilling and upsetting Otellos I’ve seen in a long time, not because of the central tragedy of doomed love but through the utterly monstrous and slithering compellingness of Summers’ Iago and the small perfect details of the supporting cast. He was superb. Perhaps this was Alden’s point all along, to redirect us into the dark heart of this opera and allow us to feel its heaving Wagnerian undertones.
Opening the ENO’s new season, this was a sumptuous performance full of brilliance, magnificent singing and driven, powerful music, but overall it lacked the subtleties of paranoia and psychosis that make this a great Shakespeare tragedy. Still, there is much to recommend this production.
Until October 17
September 25 & 27, October 4,8,11,14 & 17
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ENO at London Coliseum
St Martin’s Lane, St. Martin’s Lane, Charing Cross, London WC2N 4ES
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