OPERA: OTELLO
REVIEW BY AMELIA GROOM
This 2003 Harry Kupfer production of Verdi’s Otello (revived by Cathy Dadd) is delivered with unflinching energy and force. The Opera Australia Chorus demonstrate the power of their collective choral energy in the exhilarating opening scene, as we surge straight into the stormy drama of Shakespeare’s terrific tragedy.
Verdi’s score is relentlessly heady and passionate from start to end, and it’s an intensely demanding opera to perform. Dennis O’Neill, Cheryl Barker and Jonathan Summers do wonderful jobs as Otello, Desdemona and Iago, with the standout performance coming from Summers who gives a dark, creepy and fascinating version of the ultimate cunning bad guy. Discovering you’ve been deliberately misled into killing the one you love is surely the greatest possible tragedy, and with O’Neill’s incredible soaring pitch in that scene there was barely a dry eye in the house.
Hans Schavernoch’s set design works wonderfully with the drama. The huge slanted staircase that takes up the entire breadth of the stage means the action occurs vertically as much as it does horizontally, and all the exquisite evening gowns (by costume designer Yan Tax) are visible when the chorus members are all on the stairs together. The shuttered doors along the top of the stairs lend themselves well to the eavesdropping scenes, and allow us to see when someone is approaching.
It’s evident that the intensely emotional tale translates well to the opera stage – George Bernard Shaw went as far as to say, ‘the truth is that instead of Otello being an Italian opera written in the style of Shakespeare, Othello is a play written by Shakespeare in the style of an Italian opera ‘ Its characters are monsters;’ and the plot is a pure farce plot; that is to say it is supported on a deliberately precarious trick with a handkerchief which a chance word might upset at any moment. With such a libretto Verdi was quite at home”
Otello
Until August 16
Sydney Opera House
Tickets $67-$246, 9250 7777 or www.sydneyoperahouse.com
