For some years now, Domingo has been, on stage, the greatest Otello of our age. On record, though, he has had less success. Leiferkus and Domingo have worked closely together in the theatre; and it shows in scene after scene – nowhere more so than in the crucial sequence in Act 2 where Otello so rapidly ingests Iago's lethal poison. By bringing into the recording studio the feel and experience of a stage performance – meticulous study subtly modified by the improvised charge of the moment – both singers help defy the jinx that so often afflicts Otello on record.
Opera Rara recorded the new critical edition by the Rossini Foundation of Otello. Hugely admired in its day, this highly innovative score contains some of Rossini’s most inspired music. The recording includes the reconstruction of the alternative happy ending (written for Rome in 1820) as well as an aria for Desdemona which the great Giudetta Pasta sang to acclaim in Paris and London.
This recording has never received the respect it has deserved. The sound has been cleaned up and it is a Culshaw production with the VPO. It is fairly early in Karajan's career so the mannerisms that people fault him for are not so much in evidence. Del Monico is in great voice. This role needs an Italianate voice which is why I have never warmed to Domingo performances of the role. A great deal.
-By Grant C. Creeger-
The Milan „Otello“ traditionally opens the Scala season and did so in 2001 on 7 December, but at the same time it was the farewell production before the start of the three-year renovation of the house and not least a brilliant end to the Verdi Year. The audience as well as the press cheered Barbara Frittoli as a youthfully charming Desdemona, Leo Nucci as cleverly self-controlled Iago and Plácido Domingo as a thrilling Otello, both from the dramatic and the singing point of view. Domingo had been the leading Moro di Venezi for a quarter of a century, and in Milan he said farewell to this role – “in triumph”, according to ‘The Herald Tribune’.
The opera Otello by Giuseppe Verdi and Arrigo Boito not only represents the outstanding result of an intensely fruitful creative collaboration between composer and librettist, but also one of the most important core works in the opera repertoire. With his musical setting of Shakespeare’s play, the composition of which took him several years, Verdi also achieved a new level of quality within the framework of his operatic oeuvre. His path was resolute and consistent, leading him away from structured numbers of arias, recitatives and ensembles, and towards the through-composed, large-scale dramatic form. All this based on the timeless literary foundation of Shakespeare's play.