Verdi : Otello
Metropolitan Opera Chorus
Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera, New York
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
The previous production of Otello having been retired after the Met's 2012 season, here we were with a new one by Bartlett Sher, of whose work I knew only his Tales of Hoffmann, also for the Met. His set designer, on the other hand, was a little more familiar - Es Devlin, who created the very striking set for Kaspar Holten's recent take on Don Giovanni at the Royal Opera House. As expected, therefore, visually there was a fair amount of use of video imagery, mostly to evoke the sea and storms, and a rather architectural approach to sets, large, sliding, rectangular, transparent volumes modulating the space on stage as required. When you looked more closely, it became evident that these perspex volumes were designed like Victorian buildings, with tall, arched entries, long windows, big, bevelled stone facings, or panelled interior walls - I could point to half-a-dozen buildings here in Glasgow with just that type of architecture - which was of a piece with the costumes, setting the action in the third quarter of the 19th Century. The conflicting impression of transparency and solidity was quite striking.
The direction of the singers, however, was pretty uncomplicated. This is the production that has recently ruffled some feathers because the singer of the title role is not required to "black up" for the part. Personally, I've never thought that Othello really requires more than dark hair and a healthy, dark Mediterranean tan (and maybe brown eyes, for the cinema) - he's consistently referred to as a Moor, which to me spells North African, but there's been a lot of fuss about not casting a black singer in a black role. I'm sorry, but this is opera - realism has never been its strong point, and as soon as a black tenor with the right type of voice comes along, there will be no difficulty in casting him as Otello; goodness knows there are few enough tenors of any complexion capable of singing the part.
In the meantime, perhaps Aleksanders Antonenko could have been painted a shade or two darker, but Otello's sense of isolation because of his race is something that the interpreter should be able to transmit whether or not he's sporting a deep tan. Antonenko, it has to be said, is not the most subtle of interpreters, and that aspect of the part pretty well escaped him totally. He was, for the most part, of the bull-in-the-china-shop variety, blunt and without much finesse. The same goes for his vocal interpretation; he has, by and large, the voice for the role, strong and forthright, but his tone develops a beat as the voice goes up, and it gets obtrusive after a little while. Similarly, although much of Zeljko Lucic's Iago was well sung, in that the quality of voice production was very good, the character itself seemed like a bit of a pantomime villain, perilously close to moustache-twirlingly evil, rather than truly, chillingly malevolent. Sher could surely have provided both of these singers with some better pointers for their parts, even though they've both sung them often before.
I can certainly understand why Sonya Yoncheva has been causing a bit of a stir, the voice is quite lovely, and her Desdemona is a bit less fragile than one often sees it - though still not bright enough to realise she should back off a bit on the subject of Cassio. However, that's Shakespeare's fault, really. The first two acts, nonetheless, lacked dramatic interest - the lovely Act 1 duet never quite gelled between Yoncheva and Antonenko, and I've already mentioned that Lucic lacked any real force. The orchestra, too, was precise, but too neutral, not contributing to create a true sense of atmosphere.
The second half, on the other hand, came to life on several levels. Nézet-Séguin finally stirred the orchestra into action, the painful duet between Yoncheva and Antonenko carried honest dramatic weight, Antonenko sang "Dio! mi potevi scagliar" very well, managing to sound emotionally exhausted without ever actually becoming toneless, and the trio with Iago and Cassio (Dimitri Pittas) was excellent, as was the big ensemble that concludes the act. Act 4 took a step back again, to some extent, because the Willow Song was too calculated, slow and rather affected, and the Ave Maria never quite acquired the right sort of ethereal touch, but the orchestra was still pulling its weight, and Antonenko managed to sustain the sharper dramatic focus he had achieved in the previous act.
A not completely felicitous evening, therefore, but respectable in the second half.
[Next : 20th October]
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