GÖRAN GADEMAN - ON VERDI'S OTHELLO

#OthElokuu
Once Moor, translated by Sandra Dermark

Göran Gademan

THE FINAL WORKS

Verdi now lived once more alone, and only the German master's death could resolve his creative crisis. Now, he got the second wind under the wings to create at least two more operas. Still, he took Wagner's death as a crushing blow.
(Letter to Ricordi about Wagner's death)
Ricordi brought Verdi together with Arrigo Boito, himself a renowned operatic composer. Simultaneously,.he made a careful inquiry if Verdi should not revise Simon Boccanegra, which had fallen apart twenty years and six operas ago. The composer revised this work, and realised that the libretto was an "unstable table," but, if one made new legs for it, it would stand stable at last. The one who had to "make these new legs" was Boito, and with this version began one of the most renowned composer-librettist collaborations in operatic history. They would continue their work with Verdi's two final operas, Othello and Falstaff. The most unstable leg was the finale of Act One, Boito wrote completely new lyrics to it, and it became a real piece of work, 25 minutes long. The new music was quite similar to Othello's, with flowing parlandi and intense, short, cutting choruses.
(...)
The new première was a success beyond equal at La Scala in 1881, and to that contributed none other than the singers: Verdi was so pleased with the baritone Victor Maurel that he later wrote the parts of Iago and later Falstaff just for him. The tenor Francesco Tamagno, in the role of Gabriele Adorno, later became the renowned Othello.
(...)
Inspired by their new collaboration, Verdi and Boito thus began work on a new top-secret project, which originally went by the codename "Chocolate." It was Shakespeare's Othello that they were talking about, and Verdi took his time indeed. The drama of the Moor whom the bitter Iago convinces that his wife Desdemona betrays him, and whose jealous rage goes so far that he killed her, fit Verdi like a glove. For the first time in his career, he wrote an opera without having received a commission, but only for pleasure's sake. Officially, he was done with composing, and thus it would have stayed if he had not met Boito. Verdi was in his seventies and could afford the luxury of taking it easy. Boito was nearly thirty years younger and worshipped Verdi like a god. Still there grew a collaboration on an equal footing and full of respect - at last, Verdi had found the librettist whom he had been longing for, who understood him without much having to be said. In his libretto, Boito pruned away Shakespeare's whole first act, as well as subplots and minor characters, smashed scenes together, and focused on the most relevant and most dramatic situations.
When the ur-première of Othello took place at La Scala in 1887, a tension and expectation had been mounting for several weeks. This was the first new Verdian opera in sixteen years, and the first one written for Italian stage since Un ballo in maschera (1859). Verdi had been on the spot during a month to lead the mise-en-scène. He had also got his own points of view on the mise-en-scène and stage direction. The sky-high expectations were surpassed - Othello became a triumph, not only for Verdi and his comeback, but also for Boito and the songs in their exigent parts. In his music, Verdi stages Shakespeare's story with an unstoppable flow. From the first bar, with the orchestra's gigantic crash that declenches the storm scene with the ship about to wreck, the composer pushes us in the audience back into our chairs. There, we remain enchained right until Othello breathes his last at the end of Act Four. Othello has been regarded as an academic example for operatic composition; it is nearly too perfect, without a single tear. And, even if it lacks the spontaneity of Rigoletto or Un ballo in maschera, the music has a striking freshness for being written by a septuagenarian. The border between recitative and aria has completely dissolved, and the music flows all the time in total harmony with the lyrics. There are ariose thickenings, but the music then continues steadily and uninterruptedly. Still, the songs still stand centre stage; mostly, the lyrics are completely compelling, even if the orchestra plays a great and brilliant part. This style would directly influence the Verismo composers. To a quite lower degree than in Aida, Verdi works with Leitmotive, maybe because he did not want to risk being accused of Wagnerism - the most salient one is the erotically vibrating love theme that returns for a couple of times in the finale, when Othello wakes Desdemona up and when he kisses her dead lips shortly before the curtain falls. In the wake of grande opéra, Othello is a resource-consuming work, a great choral opera with grandiose ensemble scenes and lots of stage music.
With the title role, Verdi and Boito created one of the most fascinating tenor parts in all of operatic literature - a stunningly lifelike study of a person who has been broken down step by step. From the dazzling entrance and the vibrating love duet, Othello steadily goes down and down under Iago's influence. In the great monologue of Act Three, when a furious Othello has shoved Desdemona out of the room, Verdi lets him whisper the first lines to a creeping instrumental theme, which later unfurls into a concluding furious explosion. In the finale, after the murder, we see a completely broken person, who in despair, one last time, tries to bring back love for his beloved, ere he dies by his own hand.
Not slightly less fascinating is the portrayal of Iago's intrigue role, that of a person who has absolutely everyone and everything in their hand. In his Creed - a splendid addition of Boito to the Shakespearean drama - he gives us his own manifesto: to icy melodies, he explains that all of existence is nothing, and only evil can rule. With intense intimacy and homoerotic sensualism, he depicts for Othello how Cassio whispered Desdemona's name in his sleep, for then letting it all fade into thin air in the music. This is of course nothing that Othello can control, since Cassio allegedly said it in his sleep. Most conventional is Desdemona's lyrically singable role, but Verdi has given her a couple of intensely charged scenes: the cathartic coda to her Willow Song and her Hail Mary, when Desdemona waits for Othello to come and foresees her own death. The last fragile string notes give way to an ominous throbbing theme, infinitesimally soft, as Othello creeps into the chamber to conclude his purpose. No wonder that Othello quickly spread across the world, even if the real predicament was -and still is today- finding a singer who can master the titular role.

PONCHELLI AND BOITO

The Italian operatic scene was dominated during the later half of the nineteenth century by Giuseppe Verdi. The only ones who could give him a tad of competition were, at the end of the century, Amilcare Ponchielli and his own librettist Arrigo Boito, who also was a composer. Boito was nine years younger than Ponchielli and definitely the controversial one among the two. In his youth, he was, among other things, the key figure in a group of rebel artists called la Scapigliatura (literally, the Messyheads). Time after time, they defied the establishment with their tirades on how rigid Italian opera had become, and how they wanted to renew it. Ponchielli was far more prudent, and both had studied musical composition at the Conservatory in Milan. During these student years, Boito made a study trip to Paris, during which he met Verdi. At the same time, he began to think about two subjects for operas: Faust and Nero. Boito worked on his libretto and scores for the Faust project for years, but Mephistopheles, as it came to be titled, turned out to be a great debacle at La Scala in 1868.
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It was Ricordi who, for La Gioconda, suggested for the two gentlemen Victor Hugo's play Angelo, tyran de Padoue. Hugo's drama had had a highly successful ur-première at the Comédie Franc,aise in Paris in 1835, and shortly thereafter been the source material for Mercadante's most well-known opera, Il Giuramento, at La Scala.
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The part of the spy Barnabas, written for baritone, can be seen as a clear study in advance of how Boito later fleshed out the part of Iago in Verdi's Othello. (...)
First after Mephistopheles attained its final success at La Scala, Boito and Verdi began to collaborate. Boito had already in 1870 offered Verdi his libretto for Nerone (Nero), but there was no acceptance on Verdi's side. During the whole working process on Othello, Verdi encouraged Boito to instead compose Nerone himself. It was not until Verdi's death in 1901 that Boito took up this task.