"OTELLO" STILL SPEAKS TODAY, STRAVINSKY AND BARTOK ALSO TELL THE STORY
BOTH SIDES OF GRAND AVENUE
By Donna Perlmutter
Verdi and his librettist Boito knew it. And, of course, Shakespeare the omniscient Bard knew it. Skin color is a signifier of social hierarchy.
It was so in their day and continuously -- to a murderous degree -- right now.
But “Otello” the opera, based on the playwright’s work, digs into the deepest tragic roots of that bigotry. A black man, a moor, who hails as a hero for a white community and is a victorious general back from war, falls prey to a vulnerability plotted by his poisonous ensign. It hits hard.
And who would be that hero’s most cherished prize? The one who grants him manly esteem? -- with her gaze, her devotion, her loyalty? The one who gives him his highest reward, the most valued tribute to his worth?
Why, the fair Desdemona, of course, the one whose skin color is not at issue. But it is she who inadvertently exposes him to his greatest psychological frailty, whose innocence causes his cruelest downfall, one that ends in abject horror -- with his murder of her.
This opera, if at all successfully performed, is irresistible. The title character, in a role that Verdi loaded with every musical insinuation -- from heroic, to tender, to devastated, to murderous -- stands as the ultimate tragedy.
So too, does the composer meticulously define Iago, whose lascivious thirst for Otello’s “throne” cannot be quenched. The others are pawns, just moved around on this dramatic chessboard, although with their sympathetic value intact.
What raises the stakes enormously is Verdi’s score. The love music, with its languorous intimacy, the power of Otello’s cries (in victory and of broken psyche), the nefarious plots of Iago to bamboozle his boss -- the Lion of Venice -- with all sorts of musical cues to express his lip-licking glee.
As always, these challenges were on the block with LA Opera’s current revival of its sketchy John Cox production at the Music Center Pavilion. And the cast, directed by Joel Ivany, met them well enough, if not memorably. (But then who could erase the memory of Plácido Domingo with his steely vocal power and heroic affect, to the strong man bowed?)
But while not quite mastering the fortissimo “Ésultate” -- an unnerving demand of a stage entrance that allows no warm-up and ends with a high B -- Russell Thomas did manage a semblance of the war general, even without the tenorial beef required.
Most of all, though, he excelled as a man of roiling insecurities, easy prey for the suspicions put in his ear, falsely, of Desdemona’s infidelity. In his multi-nuanced sotto voce tones you could hear the anguish as he thrashed on the floor believing Iago’s lies, and finally, his soft intonings “un bacio ancora.”
Perhaps the more complex role, though, is Iago, the master manipulator, which Igor Golovatenko delivered with all-purpose swagger and a big even baritone but no suggestion of the oily subterfuge or mockery its best interpreters unearth. And except for the last scene with her maid Emilia, this Desdemona, Rachel Willis-Sorensen, seemed more a Tosca voice than that of the Moor’s innocent bride (and especially so with dark hair).
Still, I’m sure that everyone in the audience felt her despair when Willis-Sorensen, after a gorgeously sung “Salce,” capped the aria with a timed silence before her chilling outburst -- that sudden high note piercing the air, the quietude, a moment when the full terror of what was ahead had her running to Emilia’s arms.
None of the trappings, though -- not Johan Engels’ unit set (the curving hull of a ship), nor the bare floor on which Otello strangles Desdemona (instead of the boudoir with the big white fluffy bed where he’s supposed to find her) or any of the ancillary symbols -- did their part to frame the drama.
To the rescue came James Conlon who swept up Verdi’s entirety between stage and pit with his accustomed dramatic force and lyric finesse. (And thank you, maestro, for illuminating here a number of melodic motifs that figure in the composer’s next and last opera, “Falstaff.”)
But then there was the action across the street at Disney Hall. Without stagings of any sort, the LA Philharmonic held forth with music that very much had theatrical focus.
Esa-Pekka Salonen, the orchestra’s erstwhile director, returned with the L.A. premiere of his organ concerto, which he calls a Sinfonia concertante, book-ended by two marvelous 20th-century ballet suites, Stravinsky’s “Petrushka” and Bartok’s “The Miraculous Mandarin” -- a program (the opener and closer) not just made in heaven, but one that the conductor-composer can define as strictly his métier. Those striking, hair-line angularities, the complex percussion, cross-rhythms, sudden cadences -- they all dispose him to the world that is both within his grasp and of his enchantment.
What’s more, the LA Phil couldn’t be happier or more virtuosic -- soloists and all -- to conjure these pleasures as the extraordinary band it is. Gleaming, sharp-edged, with fulsome presence, both of these masterworks were knockouts. You had to be there.
If there was one tiny quibble, Petrushka’s frail little tune came across with hardly a glimmer of pathos -- in contrast to the aggressive festivities and dooming threats that surrounded him. Just picture Diaghilev’s Nijinsky, the originator, in character.
As for Salonen’s Sinfonia, it made a mighty noise overall, after a pointillist-impressionist start, then chromatic scales repeated, then ghostly organ shimmerings, courtesy of Iveta Apkaina. But for its 30-minute duration I sensed a competition between what the composer himself said of the organ -- that it’s a whole orchestra all on its own -- and the ensemble.
Unsurprisingly, there was a jumble of unidentifiable forces, a thick textural gumbo and bombast much of the time, but also a respite that came in several organ cadenzas, some even remindful of the live accompaniments to silent films. When left to its natural state of grandeur, yes, the organ took its place. Nothing could compete with that.