OPERA REVIEW: OTELLO
5 Feb'10

COC's OTELLO powerful, complex

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

TORONTO - Engineers have long recognized the effectiveness of the triangle as one of nature's most enduring building blocks.
Romanticists, meanwhile, have known for as long, or perhaps even longer, that when it comes to affairs of the heart, a triangle can be an instrument of destruction. Nowhere moreso, perhaps, than in Shakespeare's Othello, an unconventional tale of love and hate that ultimately destroys all three of its protagonists, through the corrosive powers of jealousy.

That power has been distilled even further, it seems, in OTELLO, Giuseppe Verdi's valedictory to the opera world, and what many consider to be his magnum opus.

OTELLO is on display now on the stage of the Four Seasons Centre in a lush Canadian Opera Company/Welsh National Opera co-production that opened Wednesday.

It's a production in which no one is likely to have the slightest difficulty recognizing the principal characters, for all that they have been substantially tweaked by librettist Arrigo Boito to make the twisted plot a little more focused and a trifle more -- well -- operatic.

First off, there is Otello himself, sung by tenor Clifton Forbis -- a Moor who has not only escaped a life of slavery but has, in the service of the Venetian Republic, pulled himself up by his military bootstraps until he commands a military force that, at the top of the tale, defeats the Turks in a massive sea battle. In celebration of his victory, he returns to the island of Cyprus and there weds the lovely Desdemona, sung by soprano Tiziana Caruso, a loving and faithful daughter of the republic that Otello serves.

And then, of course, there is the evil Iago (baritone Scott Hendricks), Otello's lieutenant and a man so jealous of his commander's success he will stop at nothing to cut him down to size. Using nothing but a handkerchief and Otello's own insecurities, he not only accuses his commander's new wife of infidelity, he weaves such a compelling web that Otello is driven first to murder and then to suicide, leaving Iago's career in ruins as well.

But in the end, it's a libretto that supports Verdi's dark and dramatic music far more than it does nuanced characterizations -- and one suspects every director who has ever tackled the work has faced a major challenge in balancing Iago's treachery with Otello's intelligence.

To forestall any questions as to why Otello doesn't see through Iago's very obvious machinations, director Paul Curran and designer Paul Edwards have conspired to create a rough-and-tumble military world in period, wherein both men are far more concerned with doing than with feeling, and both Forbis and Hendricks embrace it with convincing swagger and strong vocal skills.

Meanwhile, Caruso's Desdemona quickly rises above the kind of unfortunate costuming that suggests that before there was a Frederick's of Hollywood, there was a Frederick's of Venice, to create a memorably tragic and musically nuanced operatic heroine.

But mostly, they just go with the musical flow, wisely relying heavily on Verdi's complex and magnificent score -- a whole-cloth exploration of the darker side of human emotion, served up with tightly reined skill by the COC Orchestra under Paolo Olmi -- and Edwards' lush sets to carry the day. They all succeed admirably, despite that pile of rubble that anchors an otherwise strong design palate and cramps some of the otherwise beautiful crowd scenes, featuring a memorable blending of the COC Chorus and the Canadian Children's Opera Company.

They may not climb to Shakespearean heights, but somewhere Verdi could be grinning ear to ear as he enjoys the view.