living in a glass house
by Douglas Messerli
Giuseppe Verdi (composer), Arrigo
Boito (libretto, from Shakespeare’s play as translated by Giulio Carcano and
Victor Hugo), Otello / The
Metropolitan Opera HD live production, October 17, 2015
Life in late 19th-century Cyprus is
truly a communal affair—at least as imagined by director Bartlett Sher and set
designer Es Devlin in the MET’s recent production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello. The opera begins with a grand
community event, the island’s citizens gathered, apparently in a heavy rain, to
watch the return of their governor and general of the Venetian fleet as it
attempts to find its way into safe harbor in a tempestuous storm. Despite
temporary fears that the ship has been ripped apart, the Moor Otello (performed
sans blackface in this production by
Aleksanders Anntonenko) steers his vessel into port, announcing that he and his
soldiers have been victorious in their fight against the Muslim Turks.
Also in that gathering is Otello’s ensign, Iago (Želijo Lučić), envious of Cassio, who Otello has promoted to head officer instead of choosing him. When Roderigo confesses to Iago about his love of Desdemona (Sonya Yoncheva), Iago pretends to befriend him, plotting a way to get back at Cassio by getting him drunk—a weakness that everyone seems to be aware of, including Cassio himself, who at first declines to drink—before egging on Roderigo to fight him. The fight and accidental wounding of a bystander and the former governor, Montano, who attempts to stop the fight, draws the newly returned hero from his home, who in anger, dismisses Cassio for his actions and demands that all return to their homes.
So begins the long series of downward-spiraling incidents, triggered by Iago’s intimations and outright lies, ending in Otello's killing of the Desdemona.
I have always been puzzled, even when reading Shakespeare, why Otello relies so heavily on Iago’s insinuations in a world in which he might have consulted with numerous others for the truth about events. Or, as my opera-going companion, Thérèse Bachand asked after the performance, “Why does Otello trudge dutifully into the darkness?” Particularly in this production, wherein the governor and his people appear to be living in a massive, although constantly shifting, glass palace (the idea for this set came evidently from librettist Arrigo Boito’s comment to Verdi that they had put their hero into a “glass prison”) where nearly all behavior is transparent, it seems even stranger that Otello would choose to believe a man whom he, himself, apparently, did not chose to entrust as his head soldier.
Iago, we know even from his own lips, is simply evil, a man who believes
in the basest values of all men, and with that knowledge we readily perceive
him—unlike Otello—as a kind of Satan. But why can’t Otello see through him?
What Verdi’s opera seems to suggest is that although Otello is a
glorious military figure (in her last act Desdemona even sings that her
husband’s destiny is to be a figure of “glory,” while she a figure doomed by
“love”), the governor is not a particularly good leader—which may also to be
the opinion of the Venetian representative who recalls Otello home to Venice,
and plans to put Cassio in charge of Cyprus.
Increasingly, as Otello slips into madness and Iago’s accusations
against Desdemona become more and more absurd, his relationship with the evil
being seems more and more perverse. Instead of turning to the being of honesty
and truth whom he has married, Otello would rather marry (in its meaning of
“uniting with” or “joining”) with Iago, where small signs and tokens (the sight
of Cassio laughing about a woman, the appearance of a handkerchief) matter more
than observing what is evident.
Iago himself has long been perceived by some readers and performers
as having a homosexual attraction to Otello and perhaps even to Cassio, with
whom he describes having slept. Laurence Olivier and David Sachet, in
their interpretations of Othello and Iago, explored just these concerns in Shakespeare’s
original play. But even Sher, who as a director has certainly not been afraid to explore homosexuality in his theatrical productions, does not fully embrace that possibility in this production.
If the transparently innocent Desdemona is willfully destroyed in the
process, the equally innocent Cassio claims his right to rule by killing
Roderigo, restoring the light to which Otello has been blind.
Los Angeles, October 19, 2015
Reprinted from US Theater, Opera, and Performance (October 2015).
No comments:
Post a Comment