Otello on an aircraft carrier sails on a sea of orchestral pleasures if short of a proper captain at the helm.

His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth

February 11, 2014

If Verdi hadn’t been tempted back to the opera house at the age of 80 to compose Falstaff, there would probably be little dispute that he’d crowned his illustrious career with his treatment of Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello in 1887. Even then, it had taken ten years to persuade him to put pen to paper following Aida in 1871 and the writing of the music was to take him a further six years. Our gain though as each of Verdi’s final masterpieces are notable for the musical and dramatic advances that the elderly composer still had in him.

His co-conspirator was librettist Arrigo Boito, who also did the honours on Falstaff, and in both cases the younger man proved an excellent condenser of Shakepeare’s sprawling originals. In the case of Otello, he excised the entire first act and through a process of judicial pruning and refocusing (including the addition of Iago’s famous Credo and the removal of most of Shakespeare’s references to Othello’s colour) came up with the taut psychodrama that is Verdi’s opera....