The Moorish general Othello is manipulated into thinking that his new wife Desdemona has been carrying on an affair with his lieutenant Michael Cassio when in reality it is all part of the scheme of a bitter ensign named Iago.
Director: Brian Large
Conductor: Georg Solti
Stars: Plácido Domingo, Kiri Te Kanawa, Sergei Leiferkus; corresponding to Otello, Desdemona & Iago, respectively.
Yet another Otello by PD in my collection, the other being the Zeffirelli film from '86, which I rated 8 almost exactly 4 months ago.
PD was fab, as was KT. I liked some of the costumes for those 2 as well.
Reasons this is rated lower:
- My preference for film, where the director can plan more precisely on what we will see. For instance, although I saw Emilia pick up the handkerchief, I never saw it passed from Emilia to Iago. I saw Iago with it later, taunting Cassio. (Full disclosure: back in July I also watched the play, so maybe the opera film didn't really make me notice the passing either.)
- Rodrigo was an oldish bald guy (of little rank), so why the heck was Iago pretending to help him win the queen away from the Moor? I suppose later we learn how awful Iago is, so we can attribute it to his sociopathic scheming. It just made me wince when I saw this Rodrigo.
- This Iago didn't make me want to hate him or watch his machinations. That's partly due to my familiarity now with the story, but the film did the wonderfully blasphemous thing of setting Iago's monologue (where he tells us he's created in the image of a cruel god) in a beautiful church. It's also due to the casting; he's a bit bland somehow.
- This version did not show me Iago getting caught (he just ran out of the room with many trailing him.)
Still recommended, but when I want to see Otello, I'm reaching for the film, unless I want to see KT.
BTW, ratings on IMDb are reversed: this is higher than the film by almost 1.5 pts (8.6 [66 votes] vs. 7.2 [441 votes]). I suspect that's because the film as more than 30 min shorter, and opera purists want the whole thing, not just parts. I'm not so pure.
BTW, ratings on IMDb are reversed: this is higher than the film by almost 1.5 pts (8.6 [66 votes] vs. 7.2 [441 votes]). I suspect that's because the film as more than 30 min shorter, and opera purists want the whole thing, not just parts. I'm not so pure.
BBC, Covent Garden & more, cond. Solti; 7
