Othello/Otello ‒ black or white?

What a problem Verdi left to us in casting his Otello.

It’s not such a problem nowadays with the original Shakespeare. As early as 1959 I saw the amazing Paul Robeson on the stage at Stratford (Sam Wanamaker his savage Iago, Mary Ure a delectable Desdemona). And later (in 1989) Willard White at the Young Vic (Iago ‒ Ian McKellen, Desdemona ‒ Imogen Stubbs).

If only Verdi hadn’t conceived his Moor as a tenor, both of those great black bass-baritones might have been just the ticket. But he didn’t. He demands not just any old tenor, but a genuine dramatic one, with a powerful ringing top and a baritonal timbre. What’s more, one who can act. These creatures are hard to find.

And all that is still not enough. In our enlightened times, it’s no longer satisfying to have a white man blacked up, often conjuring up stereotypical black gestures and accents. Shades of the ghastly Laurence Olivier performance.

When I saw the exciting Graham Vick production of the Verdi with his Birmingham Opera Company a few years ago, Vick cast the West Indian Ronald Samm in the role. Samm was good, perhaps very good. But not great.

So what was David Alden to do in his new production for ENO at the Coliseum?

He has at his disposal perhaps the finest dramatic tenor of this generation, the Australian Stuart Skelton, who has the ideal vocal equipment and acts powerfully, but is oh so white. Alden has left Skelton au naturel, no blacking up. And the result is an unforgettable evening in the opera theatre.

And yet. And yet, there’s still something missing in this wonderful evening, and that is the shocking fact that the Moor is black, not white ‒ a former slave, an outsider and misfit in Venetian society.

Sunny sounds at Glyndebourne

Glorious sunny day at Glyndebourne, where we were lucky enough to take in the dress rehearsal of Verdi’s Falstaff.

He wrote this brilliant, taut, energetic, funny piece at the age of eighty, his last opera. Hope for us all. (By the way, the opera is a serious improvement on The Merry Wives of Windsor.)

The singing was first-rate, but it was the orchestral playing that was so intriguing. For the first time, Falstaff was given with an orchestra dedicated to the kind of instruments and performing practices that the composer would have expected. This seems to have been at the initiative of the conductor, a famous Verdian, Sir Mark Elder, the band in question being the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

While they started life focused on baroque and classical music, in recent years the OAE has been exploring the Romantic repertoire, right up to the early twentieth century, with revelatory consequences. 

In this case, using gut strings instead of metal, and with narrow-bore trombones and valveless horns, the orchestra produced sounds of startling clarity. But for me the major change was the shift in balance of sound between orchestra and stage. Often the singers have to strain to be heard over a modern symphony orchestra playing fortissimo, but here they could really shine through.

A memorable evening.

Composing at 98

On Tuesday I went to the UK première of Elliott Carter’s Clarinet Quintet at Richmond Concert Society, played by the excellent Endymion, the clarinettist being the brilliant Mark van de Wiel.

The thing to note is that this extraordinary outpouring of creativity comes, not from a young man, but from a ninety-eight year old American who has been composing for seven, maybe eight, decades. He is a sprightly 102 now and is regarded by many as the world’s greatest living composer.

Of course, Carter is not alone. Among others, Bach, Brahms, Liszt, Wagner, Verdi and Vaughan Williams composed much of their finest music in old age.

And Janacek, who created several of the greatest operas of the twentieth century, didn’t really get going until he was past sixty.

Melba at 150

In two weeks time from today (19 May) it will be the 150th birthday of Helen Porter Mitchell. She was born in Melbourne, Australia, and was destined to become the leading opera singer in the world in the Golden Age - and a household name - Dame Nellie Melba.

There were a number of special qualities that separated Nellie from her contemporaries:

With the help of three teachers – Ellen Christian, Pietro Cecchi and Mathilde Marchesi – and the requisite “10,000 hours”, she developed a technique that enabled her to perform at the highest level over four full decades. “Salvatore, viens,” Marchesi called to her husband on first hearing the girl, “j’ai trouvé une étoile.”

In an age when married women were expected to give up work, she decided that instead the husband should go.

She had a wonderful sense of pitch and always sang in tune.

She learned many of her greatest roles with the composers themselves – Verdi, Massenet, Gounod, Puccini among them. And she promoted avant-garde songs by Debussy, Duparc, Chausson and others.

She took responsibility at all stages for managing her own career, bringing in a series of helpers, but never delegating the authority.

She was a brilliant entrepreneur, always ready to do what was necessary to maintain her profile and fill houses. “There are plenty of duchesses, but only one Melba,” she said.

“If you wish to understand me, you must understand first and foremost that I am an Australian,” she wrote. This attitude enabled her to break through the rigid barriers of British society of her day, speaking plainly with everyone at every level.

She was a catalyst in building the newly-emerging recording industry, negotiating a pioneering royalty arrangement.

When she died in Sydney in 1931, her coffin was carried by special train to Melbourne, stopping at towns and villages on the way so that crowds of people could pay their respects. Her grave at Lilydale carries a brief phrase from her most famous role, Mimì in La bohème: “Addio, senza rancor.” Farewell, no hard feelings.

Here she is at 65, singing that very aria , recorded live at her Farewell from Covent Garden in 1926: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEhr_3E3XEA

Walkabout Verdi

Aside from silly and often irrelevant productions posing as creative, opera has not been noted for innovation in recent times. So what joy Graham Vick’s powerful new production of Verdi’s Othello in Birmingham.

Staged in a disused inner city factory. No seats, no shoes. Surrounded (it turns out) by actors and singers, it blasts off with the great storm and the arrival of the conquering hero in our midst. And before long, we are all dancing in cheerful circles.

Given that nowadays real black Othellos are the rule in the “legitimate” theatre, rather astonishingly Vick’s production has not only the first operatic black Othello, but also a black Iago, and is set in a contemporary, unidentified African state.

It’s an overwhelming experience. You can read my more extended review of it in Opera Britannia by clicking on the link below right.

What’s your experience of innovation in opera and theatre these days?