“Otello” at Kennedy Center (Nov. 17, 2019): Verdi’s masterpiece amounts to “don’t ask don’t tell” for straight men
The Kennedy Center and Washington Opera picked an opportune time to put on Giuseppe Verdi’s “Otello” (1887), based on William Shakespeare’s play “Othello” (1565), itself based on “A Moorish Captain” from the collection “Gil Hecatommithi” by Cinthio at the same time. This was the last performance of the opera in this set.
The libretto was written by composer Arrigo Boito (“Mefistofele”, which I saw in 1996 at the Washington Opera with Ramey performing). The conductor was Daniele Callegari and the theatrical director was David Alden.
Yes, there is a of material in here about race and religion, and character, and fits in well with what is going on in the U.S. right now.
The main theme of the play is, as we know, about jealousy, and it builds up quickly. Otello (Russell Thomas) arrives from his fleet in storms at port in Cyprus as the people celebrate, and soon political storms underneath erupt. He has defeated the Turks (flash forward to Trump and Erdogan). Iago (George Gagnidze) resents his displacement by Cassio (Zach Borichevsky) and puts in play a plot to destroy Otello’s marriage to Desdemona (Leah Crocetto), using the low-tech carrier of a handkerchief.
The music in the opera follows the same basic arch as does the Requiem. That is, there is some violence and maybe triumph late in the first half (like the Dies Irae in that piece; in Act 2, the “Credo” (belief”) is the main theme, as from a Mass); then early in the second half there is more triumph (like the Offertorium and Sanctus), before, in this opera, horrific tragedy strikes in the final act as Otello’s jealousy leads to murder of his wife and his own suicide. The opera ends quietly in a hushed E major. The music often uses adjacent notes and melodic elements in curves, and successive chords in the chromatic scale.
OK, a lot of people don’t appreciate this, but there is even more politics. In Act 2, I think it is Otello who says “An honest man is an actor” (as translated across the top of the stage). What flashed into my find was Carlos Maza’s Vox Strikethough video of how “David Hogg Beats His Critics” (in early 2018), responding to Alex Jones’s and others’ claims that Hogg was a crisis actor. Cameron Kasky (also a founder of March for our Lives) actually is an actor (he played in “Fiddler on the Roof” recently) and attends Columbia now. Very odd connection.
Otello dismisses death as “nothingness” and (unlike Mefistofele!) heaven as an “old wives tale” (a meme-term of mine in my book, below). The opera is viewed as depicting inter-racial or at least inter-cultural and cross-religious relationships, as politically unsettling to others around them.
Then shortly afterword Iago narrates an incident in military service when they were sleeping in close quarters and Cassio told, in his sleep, a story of intimacy with Desdemona. This reminds me of the whole idea of “no privacy in the barracks” argument (from Nunn and Moskos) early in the debate on gays in the military (the opera “Billy Budd” by Benjamin Britten deals more with this issue) except that here it sounds like “don’t ask don’t tell” for heterosexuals. The narrative also is similar to my own narrative of “roommate issues” when I was at William and Mary in 1961, as I narrate toward the end of the first “Do Ask Do Tell” book, where I talk about the “tribunals”. This was rather chilling.
end