Opera and Shakespeare - what’s not to like?

We will look at Verdi’s “Otello”, and a terrific 1992

video production with Placido Domingo and Kiri Te

Kanawa, from a generation ago. This is Domingo’s

signature role that he has performed countless times.

In an earlier era opera was the main entertainment of

high society and there are works by painters like Renoir

here that show his contemporaries in box seats. Those

sophisticates back then would have been very familiar

with the Shakespeare plays, as well as the popular operas.

Times and tastes have changed. For this LLI course we

do not assume any prior

knowledge of opera or

Shakespeare.

For our fifth opera,

Verdi’s “Otello”, we

will briefly review the

plot before showing

excerpts from the opera.

In early productions of

the play and the opera,

the Othello character –

a Moor – would be

portrayed by the actor

or singer (almost always

a white man) in dark blackface. Sensitivities these days

have resulted in a much lighter skin tone for the makeup

and so sometimes the Moor is barely credible as such.

Here is an old llustration from an “Otello” brand cigar

box. Below that is an 1884 theater poster for the famous

Shakespearian actor Thomas

Keen. The black Moor, to

Shakespeare, represented the

“other” and in his day the term

Moor could refer to black Africans

and also to African Arabs.

Shakespeare has other characters

malign Otello but then we meet

him and are asked to respond to

the real person, not stereotypes.

In the play and the opera the “otherness” of

the character is often emphasized with exotic

clothing. Here we see his contrast with the pure

whiteness of her skin and the very simple white

clothing of his wife, the beautiful Desdemona.

Spoiler alert – this play/opera does not

end well. The miscegenation aspect of the

play has always been problematic for some

groups. In the American South, after the Civil

War, Othello was “whitened up” to dilute the

threat always posed by the mixing of the races.

Painting of Edwin Booth,

the famous American

Shakespearian actor – here in

his role as the “Othello”

villain Iago. He was

considered an extremely fine

actor but is mostly

remembered today as the

brother of John Wilkes Booth,

who shot President Lincoln.

Below is a photo of him,

playing Hamlet.

Photo at right is a 1929

Yiddish theater production of “Othello”. Yiddish theater

versions of Shakespeare often

changed the endings of the

tragedies to be happy.