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jonas kaufmann as otello and marco vratogna as iago in otello at the royal opera house
Give us some Moor: Jonas Kaufmann (left) in the title role with Marco Vratogna ‘in total command’ as Iago in Otello at the Royal Opera House. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Observer
Give us some Moor: Jonas Kaufmann (left) in the title role with Marco Vratogna ‘in total command’ as Iago in Otello at the Royal Opera House. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Observer

Otello review – an underpowered Kaufmann is outshone by Iago

This article is more than 6 years old
Royal Opera House, London
Marco Vratogna steals the show in Royal Opera’s fine new staging

Even in a summer packed with intriguing new opera productions – Hipermestra and Hamlet at Glyndebourne, A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Aldeburgh, Tosca at Grange Park – Covent Garden’s first new Otello for 30 years, with star tenor Jonas Kaufmann making his eagerly awaited debut in the title role, promised to eclipse them all. Finally, Elijah Moshinsky’s reliable if traditional staging would be swept away and replaced with an entirely new vision of Verdi’s great last tragedy. It would be the hottest ticket in town on what turned out to be the hottest night of the year.

From the start, in the most musically daring storm scene in all opera, director Keith Warner reminded us firmly that Verdi originally intended to name the piece Iago. He places his arch manipulator, the Italian baritone Marco Vratogna, centre stage and there he stays, dominating the action, plotting the downfall of the man he hates more than life itself, the apparently invincible warrior Otello.

Vratogna is in total command, vocally and dramatically, ever alert to the sinuous subtleties of Verdi’s most flexible score, dark and menacing, and ruthless in his racist determination to destroy his man. He knows instinctively that all devious schemers can present a plausible face to the world while sowing seeds of doubt in malleable minds. Vratogna took over the role just three weeks ago (just as he stepped in as Scarpia three years ago) and it was he, not Kaufmann, who drew and deserved the greatest ovation on opening night.

That storm scene introduces another character to the piece in this new production: the set itself. Designer Boris Kudlička has built a clever, shape-shifting tunnel that fragments and slides, lit starkly by Bruno Poet to emphasise Otello’s descent into jealous madness, or bathed in soft, golden hues when hidden rooms and courtyards are revealed behind attractive Moorish tracery. The set both brilliantly frames and comments on the drama, and is suitably ambiguous for a production that consciously moves away from the realism of Moshinsky’s Renaissance world towards an expressionism that more closely reflects Verdi’s most daringly fluid score.

There are some minor stumbles. The text tells us that the storm has badly damaged Otello’s ship and driven it on to rocks, and yet, when deliverance comes, a huge, perfectly intact vessel slides into view, Captain Pugwash-like, and remains firmly in full sail, even while its cargo of plunder is unloaded. Occasionally the splendid chorus is hampered and partly obscured by the set. But these are quibbles: those few who chose to boo the production team at the curtain simply revealed their pitiful lack of imagination. They plainly could not see that setting the piece in nominally Elizabethan and yet indeterminate place and time underlines what Shakespeare tells us: that racism, lies and manipulation are always with us.

Maria Agresta (Desdemona) with Jonas Kaufmann as Otello. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Observer

There was no stumbling in the pit. Antonio Pappano conducts with a missionary zeal for this piece, charming the green-eyed snake of jealousy that slithers through Verdi’s score and pushing the orchestra to the limit, raising the temperature still further when the tension mounts. And, for the most part his singers go with him, riding the raging sea he conjures beneath them.

The Italian soprano Maria Agresta makes an implacable Desdemona, devastated yet dignified in the face of Otello’s false accusations of adultery and singing with a tender yet creamy intensity, never more so than in Piangea cantando nell’erma landa and her heartfelt Ave Maria, moments before her demise. The Canadian tenor Frédéric Antoun is a lithely elegant Cassio, and among the smaller roles, Estonian mezzo Kai Rüütel as Emilia and Korean bass In Sung Sim really make their mark.

But what of Otello himself? Kaufmann has said he wanted to wait until he felt really ready to sing this role. Opera-goers will no doubt debate for some time whether that moment has arrived. In interviews during rehearsals he confessed that his opening Esultate was a challenge in itself, let alone the heavily demanding Ora e per sempre addio sante memorie in Act 2, followed by his duet with Iago, Sì, pel ciel marmoreo giuro. On opening night, Kaufmann negotiated these moments with ease, and yet there was a cloudiness to the voice, even in the lower register where he often excels. And the performance felt constrained, reined back. He looked terrific, every inch the handsome hero, and yet you longed for him to really let rip. At times he was simply overwhelmed by the orchestra – not a problem for the other principals.

Only in the final act did he really seem to settle and his devastation really move us, but for all that it was Iago’s night – not Otello’s.

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