Verdi: Otello

With a work as great and demanding as Verdi’s Otello, it is certain that no production will be ideal, but the performance recorded here, from Salzburg in 2008, comes as close as we are likely to get.

Riccardo Muti can unleash volumes of sound and torrents of passion as no conductor since Carlos Kleiber has been able to. We begin with the equivalent of a high-voltage electric shock, and the intensity is maintained through to the final chord.

Our rating

5

Michael Beek

Published: January 20, 2012 at 4:31 pm

COMPOSERS: Verdi
LABELS: C Major
WORKS: Otello
PERFORMER: Aleksandrs Antonenko, Marina Poplavskaya, Carlos Álvarez, Barbara Di Castri, Stephen Costello, Antonello Ceron, Mikhail Petrenko, Simone Del Savio, Andrea Porta; Konzertvereinigung; Chorus of the Vienna State Opera; Salzburg Festival Children’s Choir; Vienna PO/Riccardo Muti; dir. Stephen Langridge (Salzburg, 2008)
CATALOGUE NO: 701408 (NTSC system; DD 5.1; 16:9 picture format)

With a work as great and demanding as Verdi’s Otello, it is certain that no production will be ideal, but the performance recorded here, from Salzburg in 2008, comes as close as we are likely to get.

Riccardo Muti can unleash volumes of sound and torrents of passion as no conductor since Carlos Kleiber has been able to. We begin with the equivalent of a high-voltage electric shock, and the intensity is maintained through to the final chord.

The production is broadly traditional, with projections used for the raging seas and other natural effects, as well as a certain degree of patterning onstage. The acting, most of which is in sweaty close-up, is excellent, the singers all nurtured in their roles by Stephen Langridge.

Otello is played by Aleksandrs Antonenko, who is tremendous in all respects. His Desdemona is the lovely Marina Poplavskaya, vague of diction but an expert in suffering. Carlos Álvarez’s Iago and Stephen Costello’s Cassio are both nothing short of outstanding.

My only cavil is that Muti opts for the revised ensemble at the close of Act III. Written for Paris in 1894, it is so obviously inferior to Verdi’s original version as to make Muti’s choice seem peverse. Even so, to my mind this is the DVD Otello to go for. Michael Tanner

Reviews Editor, BBC Music Magazine

Michael is the Reviews Editor of BBC Music Magazine. He looks after the 26 pages of recording and book reviews in the magazine each month, deciding what will be reviewed – no easy task with so much being sent in for consideration! Michael joined the team in 2018, following ten years as a freelance film music journalist and fifteen years at St George's Bristol. Film and television music is his favourite thing, and when he’s not listening to things to be reviewed in the mag, Michael loves nothing more than to listen to the music of John Williams and James Horner – his favourite film composers. He was the Editor of MusicfromtheMovies.com and has written for the BBC Proms, BBC Concert Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Albert Hall, Hollywood in Vienna and Silva Screen Records. His favourite writing gigs so far have been programmes for each of the Doctor Who Proms, soundtrack album notes for Doctor Who – Series 4 and Torchwood – Children of Earth, plus programmes and features for live concert screenings of Jurassic Park, Gladiator, Back to the Future and Raiders of the Lost Ark. While he never got the chance to interview the late James Horner, Michael was delighted to spend an hour on the phone with John Williams for the 2020 Christmas issue of BBC Music Magazine. Also a presenter, Michael has hosted concerts and live events for Bristol Film Festival and St George's Bristol, plus Debbie Wiseman's ‘Music and Words from Wolf Hall’ shows at venues across the UK. Michael has worked regularly with Debbie Wiseman over the years, writing concert programmes and scripts (for Terry Wogan and Simon Bates) and producing her 2011 album Piano Stories.