HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Questions for Discussion and Writing
Projects and Further Study

A. SETTING THE STAGE

The Venetian Republic ... found itself involved in several wars with Ottoman Turks ... After losing the harbor of Negroponte (1470), Venice was obliged to pay an annual tribute for Turkish permission to trade in the Black Sea ... In 1489, however, Venice succeeded in acquiring the Island of Cyprus by putting extortionist pressure on its widowed queen ...

In 1565, less than eighty years after the Venetians acquired Cyprus, a novel by Geraldo Cinthio was published under the title "Il Moro di Venezia." Shakespeare gave the Moro a name, "Othello", in the play he fashioned from that source with considerable alterations around 1604.

... Othello’s story is fiction, but [the] sea battle could have taken place in the last decade of the fifteenth century.

Cyprus remained a Venetian outpost for nearly a century, but it soon became powerless against "the Moslem pride" as Venice assumed a non-belligerent attitude toward the steady advance of the Turks.

(George Jellinek)

You know how this chocolate project [the code name for "Otello"] was born. You and Faccio were dining with me. There was talk of "Otello," and there was talk of Boito. The following day Faccio brought Boito to see me: three days later Boito brought me his synopsis of "Otello". I read it, and I thought it good. I said "Turn it into verse, it will be always good for you, for me, for someone else etc. etc." If you come now with Boito, I shall have to read his libretto. If I think it completely good, you will leave it with me, and I shall find myself, to a certain extent, committed. If I still find it good, but suggest a few modifications which Boito accepts, I am even more committed ...

(Giuseppe Verdi, letter to his publisher Ricordi)

For my part, I will repeat the same words concerning "Otello." There has been too much talk about it! Too much time has gone by! I am too old, and I have seen too many years of service!! So there is no need for the public to tell me too plainly that they have had enough!

My conclusion is that this had led me to cool off somewhat on "Otello," and has stiffened the hand that had begun to sketch a few bars.

(Giuseppe Verdi, letter to his librettist Boito)

"Otello" is not yet completely finished, as has been said, but it is certainly well advanced. I am not in a hurry to complete the work, because I have not yet given any thought, nor am I giving thought now, to its being performed.

(Giuseppe Verdi, letter to the baritone Maurel, who sang Iago at the premiere)

The ensemble has, as we planned, its lyrical and its dramatic parts fused together. We have, that is to say, a lyrical and melodic piece superimposed upon a dramatic dialogue.

The principal character of the lyrical part is Desdemona; that of the dramatic part Iago.

... Judge for yourself whether the two parts, the lyrical and the dramatic, seem well fused to you. Judge also whether the length of each part is well measured. I have not been sparing with lines, remindful of your admonition: "Say whatever is necessary, and let everything be well explained." Following this advice, I have concluded that the dialogue underlying the lyrical part should be extended in order to produce the tragic effect, and have acted accordingly.

(Arrigo Boito, letter to Verdi about the Act III ensemble)

... I have had news of the London "Otello." Now you confirm this news, and it pleases me, although, at my age and in the present condition of our musical world, a success means nothing ... I know that many good things have been said of Boito, and this gives me the greatest pleasure, for praise of "Otello" in shakespeare’s country is worth a great deal.

(Giuseppe Verdi, letter to the conductor Faccio)

... it is not until Otello that we get dignified accomplishment and fine critical taste; but here, too, we have unmistakably a new hand in the business, the hand of Boito. It is quite certain that Boito could not have written Otello; but certain touches in Iago’s Credo were perhaps either suggested by Boito, or composed in his manner in fatherly compliment to him; and the whole work, even in its most authentic passages, shews that Verdi was responding to the claims of a more fastidious artistic conscience and even a finer sensitiveness to musical sound than his own ...

(George Bernard Shaw)

The composition of Otello was a much less Shakespearean feat; for the truth is that instead of Otello being an italian opera written in the style of Shakespear, Othello is a play written by Shakespear in the style of Italian opera. It is quite peculiar among his works in this aspect. Its characters are monsters: Desdemona is a prima donna, with handkerchief, confidante, and vocal soli all complete; and Iago, though certainly more anthropomorphic than the Count di Luna, is only so when he slips out of his stage villain’s part. Othello’s transports are conveyed by a magnificent but senseless music which rages from the Propontick to the Hellespont in an orgy of thundering sound and bounding rhythm; and the plot is a pure farce plot: that is to say, it is supported on an artificially manufactured and desperately precarious trick with a handkerchief which a chance word might upset at any moment. With such a libretto, Verdi was quite at home: his success with it proves, not that he could occupy Shakespear’s plane, but that Shakespear could on occasion occupy his, which is a very different matter.

(George Bernard Shaw)

In basic dramatic conception, "Otello" is as different from Shakespeare’s "Othello" as it is in the matter of dramaturgy. Knowing Shakespeare, we may not entirely like this conception, but we shall have to admit its characteristic romanticism, and admire its directness, consistency, and force.

... Iago is the clearest case; he was altered from Shakespeare’s very complicated human being into that perennial operatic standby Mephistopheles ... Though Iago’s theology is somewhat muddled in the words of his "Credo," the music strikes unequivocally the tone of blasphemous bravado proper to the Black Mass ... Boito, composer of "Mefistofele," wished to call this opera "Iago." The simplification of Iago’s personality actually relieved him of the whole vexatious matter of motivation.

... Expanding [Desdemona’s] role meant making her more articulate ... As the opera continues, Desdemona becomes more and more mature, conscious, articulate, and (practically) indignant ...

Meanwhile the expansion of her role led, perhaps less deliberately, to a cutting-down of Othello ... over the four acts [his] nobility is not so convincing, in the absence of so many of Shakespeare’s safeguards ... Most critically, at the end, Verdi sacrificed the tragedy of Otello for the pathos of Desdemona. So much attention is directed towards her that Otello cannot be allowed to recall his former self in any capacity save that of a lover. His love is recaptured and even intensified; the repetition of the music associated with the kiss is the most eloquent passage in the opera. But this music is as much Desdemona’s as Otello’s, and in the great wave of pity for her we are left in doubt about our man ...

Like many students of Shakespeare, Boito and Verdi seem to have wished to harmonize the irrationalities in the play ... The motivations of evil, the tragic contradictions latent in nobility, the ambiguity of conscience, the cruelty of coincidence -- it is hard to know where we can sense these more profoundly than in "Othello." Verdi’s opera does not present exactly such insights, or raise such drastic questions, or cause such a thrilling strain on the artistic imagination ...

Verdi has written the ‘credible’ "Othello" ... Motives are brought to the surface, sympathies are clearly directed ... Verdi’s is a decorous, rationalized, powerfully romantic "Othello."

(Joseph Kerman)

I am not what I am.

Demand me nothing. What you know, you know.

From this time forth I never will speak word.

(Iago in Acts I and V of "Othello" by Shakespeare)

I believe in a cruel God, who has created me

in his image and whom, in hate, I summon.

From the baseness of a germ or atom

Base I was born.

I am evil

because I am a man;

and I feel in me the primeval filth ...

After death is Nothing,

And heaven is an old wive’s tale.

(Iago’s "Credo" in "Otello," text by Boito)

This Iago is Shakespeare, humanity, that is to say a part of humanity -- evil.

(Giuseppe Verdi)

Motiveless malignity.

(Samuel Taylor Coleridge, about Shakespeare’s Iago)

Shakespeare determined that Iago should have no motive at all. He conceived of a monster whose wickedness should lie far deeper than anything that could be explained by a motive -- the very essence of whose being should express itself in the machinations of malignity.

(Lytton Strachey)

Whether motiveless, driven by motives, or simply unaware of them himself, Iago is a flagrant malcontent, and Boito in his libretto continues the tradition of picturing him as a ruthless villain. The operatic Iago may lack Shakespearean subtlety, but he motivates the action and dominates the scene ... he is given an opportunity to lay bare his twisted Mephistophelean soul in the second-act "Credo," an interpolation of the librettist.

Paul Dukas writes that this "monologue is full of philosophical-satirical pretensions whose declamatory childishness is beyond all comment." Although Verdi has set it suitably to music, with a great deal of expression, Dukas finds the character himself so antimusical that all of Verdi’s efforts are in vain.

Whether Iago’s great aria is successful or not musically is a matter of opinion. In any event, because of the one-sidedness of the monologue Iago is stripped of the many stimulating aspects of the personality which he possesses as a Shakespearean character.

(Ruth Berges)

"Othello" presents, in essence, a morality-play allegory in which "bless’d" goodness (Desdemona) and "hellish" evil (Iago) struggle for the soul of Everyman (Othello), and so the play is impregnated with the religious language that must attend such a cosmic struggle. Devil and its derivatives occur more often (twenty-seven times) than in any other Shakespearean play ... There is no genuine "theology" in the play, but simply a constant emphasis upon the monumental contest between the divine and the diabolical in human nature. And there is no theology, muddled or otherwise, in the Credo -- just an explicit expression of this antithesis.

(Gary Schmidgall)

It does not take more than a cursory glance to see that a great deal of the play has been sacrificed ... Cassio’s role is appreciably, and Roderigo’s and Emilia’s drastically reduced. They fulfill their functions in the plot and are at once cast aside ... Even Iago fades out in Act IV. Shakes- peare’s rich tapestry of characters is reduced to three full-length figures ... [Boito] was right to concentrate on Othello and Desdemona ... their stature is not one whit abridged. Since the tragedy depends on the extent of Othello’s fall, it is essential that his basic nobility and her innocence should be established so firmly at the outset that we never question them, and this is beautifully managed. Boito’s hero and heroine, as interpreted by Verdi, are as great as Shakespeare’s ...

"Otello" is the only opera to challenge a Shakespeare tragedy and emerge undimmed by the comparison.

(Winton Dean)

Because music requires more time than the spoken word to express itself, Verdi’s librettist, Arrigo Boito, reduced Shakespeare’s play by more than half. Surprisingly, then, he -- or he and Verdi, for the two actively cooperated -- felt that some things had to added. Most of the additions are features a nineteenth-century Italian audience would expect, such as the bonfire chorus in Act I and the children’s chorus in Act II. But two of the additions are large-scale extended solos, and they give the opera a dimension that the play, with the censorship imposed on the Jacobean theater, could not express. It is a religious dimension.

The first of the additions is Iago’s "Credo" ... The opera’s other large-scale addition to Shakespeare is also a liturgical piece, Desdemona’s last-act "Ave Maria." At first sight it seems a completely unnecessary addition. Desdemona has already sung a full-length aria in the last act, a piece full of foreboding and pathos, the Shakespearian "Willow Song." Is a second aria, immediately following, really necessary? Verdi clearly thought so. He gives Desdemona an "Ave Maria" that is an extension of the traditional prayer, with extra details about heaven helping the oppressed, the humble, the innocent, to set against the hateful ranting in Iago’s "Credo." The new "Ave Maria," like the new "Credo," is a character sketch of the one who sings it.

(Owen Lee)

In opera, Boito pits words against music, and verbally teases or torments the simpleminded optimism of song ... Thus "Otello" became a quarrel between drama and music -- the witty speech of Iago (who at first was to have the title role) against the lyrical rhapsodies of Desdemona; Boito against Verdi.

The struggle in "Otello" is less for the hero’s soul than for the possession and definition of opera ...

"Othello" is a domestic drama, fussing over handkerchiefs and bed sheets. The music of "Otello" makes it elemental. Otello is the storm out of which he hurtles like a cloud-borne god, Iago is the sparking fire beside which he sings his praise of drink, and with Desdemona at the end of the first act Otello listens to a shining music of the spheres ...

(Peter Conrad)

We will try, however, to forget Shakespeare; there will be only vague reminders, pale traces of the initial text ...

But somewhere, in some corner of the retina, if you will, we also have obsessive images rising from this story’s past. We will not be able to lose sight of the figures of Negroes in D. W. Griffith’s nationalist films, white faces wearing shoe polish and a three-quarters view of Orson Welles descending the staircase of the citadel at Mogador. White dipped in black: the tenors who sing Othello wear blackface .

... The Lion of Venice, the one bravely raising his paw on the battle flag, and Othello are the same. Venice is present emblematically and in the white skin of the wife he took from there, the blond Desdemona. But later, when Othello is lying on the ground, the victim of a seizure, while the Cypriots outside are shouting, "the Lion of Venice," their chief, Iago, sets his foot on the shuddering body and cries out, "Ecco il leone!"

Here is the lion! On the ground, drooling, groaning, without his claws.

Because the lion, as in the fable, is in love with a beautiful woman, that love is his weakness, the hold Iago has on him. That is Othello’s flaw. For a marriage to take place within the kinship system, one must know how to keep the right distance according to the laws of exogamy. Too close and it is incest; too distant and it is war. Too close, it is Jocasta, or Isolde: death. Too distant, it is Othello: death again ...

The men, the other men, do not forget who this different man, Othello, is. Iago is the first to pronounce the words of racist exclusion. "Di quel selvaggio dalle gonfie labbra." This savage with the big lips ... this clown, talking like a white man, this Negro ... let’s make him roll his eyes and writhe on the ground: grotesque Othello. So dizzyingly close to the Othello in love ...

[In the love duet] Desdemona’s voice harmonizes, lower by a third. Their order, above and below, is the order of men and women; unless this voice -- that is too high -- is the symbol of its own failure. For the Moor of Venice, men’s order is untenable.

... A man would have sufficed; but a man was required. One like Othello but different; someone with a phallus, white-skinned. The real difference is blond, passive, Venetian, and deceptive.

(Catherine Clement)

B. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND WRITING

1. To a greater extent than with most other operas, commentators on "Otello" focus on the libretto. Is this misplaced energy? Do the plot, characters, and verse matter that much to us for our enjoyment of the opera, or do we care mainly about the music?

2. Assuming that the libretto does matter: some critics say that Verdi's opera is superior dramatically to the Shakespeare play on which it is based. What do you think?

3. How "faithful" is Boito's adaptation? What are the major omissions, additions, alterations? Why were they made? What effect do they have? (Consider, for instance, the "flowers and mandolins" chorus in Act II, or Desdemona's Ave Maria, which Owen Lee defends. Consider also the complete absence of Bianca and Brabantio, not to mention virtually all of Shakespeare's Act I.) How important is it for an adapter to be "faithful" to the source, especially when that source is Shakespeare?

4. In Boito's letter quoted above, he discusses Verdi's instructions to have everything "well explained." The big Act III ensemble, in which many characters sing simultaneously their own words and their own musical lines, is an intricate piece. Can a listener or viewer really untangle all of those components in "real time?" Does it matter?

5. Much controversy surrounds the character of Iago, in both the play and the opera. What do you consider to be his motives? Is the operatic Iago much different from Shakespeare's? If so, how? Is the "Credo" (discussed at such length by the critics quoted above) an artistic blunder or, as Verdi thought, exactly the right thing?

6. Few commentators on the opera address the issue of racism directly. Clement, quoted above, does. And she goes further: she explores what she perceives as the link between racism and sexism. What do we learn from the opera (and the play from which it comes) about (white) attitudes towards race and (male) attitudes towards gender? Also, consider her comments about white actors in blackface; rarely has a black singer performed the lead role in Verdi's opera. Why?

7. Another issue seldom addressed is the military/political background: (Moslem) Turks versus (Christian) Venetians. This conflict will probably seem especially important to us now. What does the opera tell us about it?

C. PROJECTS AND FURTHER STUDY

1. There are many related operas to listen to. Several are in the Met repertory; look for the study guides. Here are a few examples, organized by category.

• a. Verdi's other Shakespeare adaptations: "Macbeth" and "Falstaff"
• b. Shakespeare operas by other "major" composers: Gounod's "Romeo and Juliet",
  Bellini's "The Capulets and the Montagues", Berlioz's "Beatrice and Benedict"
  Britten's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", Barber's "Antony and Cleopatra"
• c. More Shakespeare operas in English: Harbison's "The Winter's Tale",
  Hoiby's "The Tempest", another "Tempest" by John Eaton, Giannini's "The
  Taming of the Shrew", Vaughan Williams's "Sir John in Love", Holst's "At the
  Boar's Head," Searles's "Hamlet"
• d. Other interesting works: Bloch's "Macbeth", Thomas's "Hamlet", Wagner's
  early "Das Liebesverbot" (loosely based on "Measure for Measure"), Wolf-
  Ferrari's "Sly" (very loosely based on "The Taming of the Shrew"), Argento's
  "Christopher Sly" (ditto), Faccio's "Amleto," Reimann's "Lear," Hahn's "The Merchant of Venice" (Some of these are hard to find in recordings.)
• e. Boito was a composer as well as an author. His "Mefistofele" is widely performed
  and available on CD; his unfinished "Nerone" is rarely heard, but has been recorded.
• f. The "other," earlier "Otello" opera is by Rossini, seldom staged but available on CD.

There are many more; opera composers continue to be attracted to Shakespearean texts. All these works raise fascinating questions about adapting Shakespeare for the musical stage.

2. Verdi's "Otello" is available in several video versions, mostly taped in live performance.
There is also the film by Zeffirelli, a visual spectacle that rearranges and cuts Verdi's score strangely.

3. Films of the Shakespeare play include the virtuosic Orson Welles version (referred to by Clement), the more recent version with Lawrence Fishburne and Kenneth Branagh, and a couple of "modernizations" (notably "O"). Laurence Olivier played the role in a production that was filmed onstage; Anthony Hopkins played it for a BBC video production.

4. Welles completed two other Shakespeare films: "Macbeth" and "Falstaff" (the latter also known as "Chimes at Midnight"): the same trilogy as Verdi's. Like Verdi, Welles makes Shakespeare conform to the medium he, Welles, has mastered. These films are essential viewing for people who care about both the playwright and the art of film.

5. Adaptations of Shakespeare for the Broadway musical stage include "The Boys from Syracuse" by Rodgers and Hart (from "A Comedy of Errors") and "Two Gentlemen of Verona" (music by Galt MacDermot), as well as several versions of "Twelfth Night." And don't forget "West Side Story," an updating of "Romeo and Juliet" with music and lyrics by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. There are cast recordings, as well as film versions of the first and last mentioned.

6. The best-known ballet version of "Othello" is "The Moor's Pavane" with choreography by Jose Limon; there are other, more recent versions, too.

7. The conflict between Europe and the Turkish Ottoman Empire was long, complex, and historically decisive. Read all about it. As a sidelight, listen to a couple of comic operas that use it as a backdrop, including two by Rossini ("The Turk in Italy" and "An Italian Woman in Algiers") and Mozart's "The Abduction from the Seraglio" (broadcast this season; see the study guide).

8. Take a Shakespeare play that has been less frequently adapted for opera, and make your own libretto. Remember that you'll probably have to cut drastically; that you may wish to provide expansive moments for solos, duets, or ensembles; that you may wish to include a chorus and figure out what it will sing; that you ought to envision a satisfying musical shape, with sufficient variety, contrast, building to climaxes, and so on.

9. Shakespeare's play includes ready-made lyrics to songs, notably Iago's drinking songs and Desdemona's willow song. Write your own music for those lyrics.

10. Explore the history of African-American singers and opera. Through the first half of the twentieth century, such fine singers as the tenor Roland Hayes, the contralto Marian Anderson, and the bass Paul Robeson were unwelcome in opera houses. In the past several decades, many African-American singers have enjoyed major operatic careers, but some barriers remain even today.