An Othello of turgid opulence

An Othello of turgid opulence


Announced upon his arrival with great jubilation by the mayor Dario Nardella, the superintendent of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Alexander Pereira, is, after three years, invited by the same to leave the scene. The accounts never add up, it seems that Pereira has spent more than he should (however he has brought significant private sponsorships, and first-rank artists, new to Florence), and therefore he has to leave. He does so, citing health reasons. But Nardella, who is president of the Teatro del Maggio, where were his steering committee, the three auditors, every time Pereira presented the budgets, which they then approved? Minister Sangiuliano sends Onofrio Cutaia as extraordinary commissioner: costs need to be reduced, and the program of the Festival del Maggio is also drastically reduced.

Verdi's Othello directed by Valerio Binasco

After the inaugural concert of Gatti (with a Strauss of Vita d'eroe blazing) and Don Giovanni by Mozart retrieved from Pesaro year 2017 (polite direction and with some interesting ideas by Giorgio Ferrara, unfortunately passed away a few days ago), it was recovered Verdi's Othello directed by Valerio Binasco. It is the show born at the end of 2020 in the midst of the pandemic, set up without an audience in the hall and with all the necessary distances and precautions. It was filmed by cameras and microphones, to be clumsily broadcast by RAI 5. Of the original cast (chosen by Pereira) only Luca Salsi remained, the sneaky Jago who sculpts the words with incisive cruelty and shows ease in giving life to a character he now knows like his pockets. For the rest of the singers, one mostly gets the impression of the ragtag. Arsen Soghomonyan is a colorless Othello in terms of expression, and resolves the character with generality; his singing sometimes climbs up to a few tenor shots, but it doesn't have the ductility of the mezzotints. Zarina Abaeva would also have a soft and shapely voice, but her Desdemona is awkward both in defining the character precisely and in the movements. Alternate results in the tests of Joseph Dahdah (Cassio) and Francesco Pittari (Roderigo), valid in Adriano Gramigni (Lodovico), corrected in Eduardo Martinez (Montano) and Matteo Mancini (A herald), blurred in Eleonora Filipponi (Emilia). Mehta also remained from the previous edition, who can count on the beautiful colors of the Orchestra and on the adhesion of the Coro del Maggio (the children's voices are also good): we witness a beginning of Othello of turgid opulence, in a fourth act as if suspended in its nocturnal tragedy. But the narration is discontinuous, there are défaillances between pit and stage, and no longer the enveloping twilight aura well spread the other time. As for the show in Binasco (filmed by João Carvalho Alboim), it was and is dominated by squalor: the rubble of a city devastated by a war of our times (scenes by Guido Fiorato), with a babel of outfits that nonchalantly mix ancient armor, recent soldiers, tuxedos (costumes by Gianluca Falaschi). But the tragedy that Othello tells is entirely internal, and does not need external justifications that wink at current events.

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