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One Hundred Years of Verdi's Otello
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12906 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1987 |
1,955 Words |
| Author
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Andrew Clark
Andrew Clark is a broadcaster and critic living in Switzerland. |
The date was February 5, 1987; the place, La Scala in Milan; and the opera, Giuseppe Verdi's Otello. A hundred years ago to the day, the work had premiered at La Scala in the presence of the seventy-three-year old composer himself. The centenary performance marked the return to Milan of Placido Domingo, who first sang the title role in 1975, and who has established himself in the intervening years as the preeminent Otello of our time. The other members of the cast included Mirella Freni as Desdemona and Renato Bruson as Iago in a production by Franco Zeffirelli, conducted by Carlos Kleiber.
'Otellopolis'
This is how Blanche Roosevelt, an American singer who was in Milan in 1887, described the atmosphere surrounding the first performance.
Otellopolis, February 5th 1887: At last, the great day has come and gone....I cannot tell you the anxiety felt in the city before nightfall. You may imagine the excitement was not lost on me. I hastily dressed, and before noon was in the streets. Streets? There were no streets visible, and had the blocks of houses not divided the town architecturally, everything would have been run together, like honey, with human beings, human beings, human beings!
I never knew how the day passed....I met Madame M. leaning over the piazza. "And to think of it!" she cried, "it is four o'clock. Iago's wig was brought home and fits so badly that not even glue will stick it on is head. He simply won't sing if - " "Don't," I cried, "I will give him my hair, every inch of it, and sew it on a pate myself, rather than that."
Leonardo da Vinci's statue gleamed out of the sea of faces like white eaglet's plume drifting towards a storm-swept sea. The Piazza della Scala was a sight....Poor Verdi! Had he been there, he would certainly have been torn to pieces, as a crowd in its enthusiasm rarely distinguishes between glory and assassination.
After dinner - I didn't dine, I swallowed food - we started to the theatre. The carriage had to be sent off long before we reached the door, the horses could not make their way through the crowd. I expected my dress would be in rags; however I managed to get in whole, and once there the sight was indescribable. La Scala has never before held such an audience. The light murmur of expectant voices issuing from three thousand throats, audible, but discreetly indistinct, reminded me of the sounds
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