This year marks the bicentennial of Verdi’s birth, and OperaQ are celebrating with a new production of his masterpiece, Otello, in association with Cape Town Opera, West Australian Opera, New Zealand Opera, State Opera of South Australia and Victorian Opera. Such a broad geographic collaboration ensures a strong touring schedule over the next two years, not to mention a decent budget for production costs.
Director Simon Phillips has updated the setting from a coastal city in medieval Cyprus to a modern first world naval aircraft carrier somewhere in the Middle East. Members of the Opera Queensland chorus have been drilled to within an inch of their lives, creating a realistic impression of a busy naval base in a war zone.
Musically, this is a tour de force. The chorus creates a grand, thrilling wall of sound, the Queensland Symphony Orchestra is likewise on top form under the baton of Johannes Fritzsch. Otello, (Frank Porretta) sings with great skill and a sweetness of tone that is achingly beautiful in the quieter moments, his Desdemona (Cheryl Barker) stunningly powerful and sensitive. Unlike Shakespeare’s Iago, who never reveals his motive for destroying Othello, in Verdi and his librettist Arrigo Boito’s version he is proudly jealous and vengeful. Douglas McNicol is quite terrifyingly believable in this avowedly satanic role.
There are aspects of the staging that serve cleverly to highlight some of the evils of contemporary western society. The sailors, highly disciplined when their officers are around, become a bullying mob when alcohol takes over. Otello, not a person of colour in this production, is revealed as a violent tormenter of his wife, who defends his appalling behaviour even to her death.
Less successful is the poorly executed fight choreography, and the strangely static scenes with the chorus locked into rows of chairs, singing with great passion but totally immobile, almost disembodied. It sounds wonderful, but looks weird. Likewise, when Otello is positioned at moments of high drama – as in his triumphant entrance in Act I – up on the raised deck where his sound disappears into the flies, or when he and Desdemona perform their gorgeous love duet rolling clumsily around on a soft mattress, the sheer incongruity distracts from the power of the music and the trajectory of the tragedy.
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
Presented by Opera Q/Cape Town Opera/West Australian Opera/New Zealand Opera/State Opera of South Australia/Victorian Opera.
26 October 2013
QPAC, Lyric Theatre, Brisbane
Music: Giuseppe Verdi. Libretto: Arrigo Boito. Director: Simon Phillips. Conductor: Johannes Fritzsch with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. Lyric Theatre, QPAC, Brisbane, 24 October – 2 November 2013
