Customer Reviews

Verdi: Otello

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is, by far, the best Otello recorded. The late Serafin is hard to beat, superb. His speeds are at the slow side, but with great intensity and profoundity. The humanity of Otello comes out movingly. The climaxes are built to perfection by his experienced baton. He is the main reason for buying this set. Vickers is a perfect singer to match Serafin's qualities. His voice is strong (though not as Vinay's) and the characterization is as detailed as the conducting. Gobbi is unbeatable. Rysanek is stronger-voiced than most Desdemonas today, and it reveals to be a positive point. Desdemona becomes a true woman, not a boring child. The sound is fantastic, much better than most digital recordings of our day. Strongly recommended.

This is surely the "Otello" to have if you're having only one. The CD transfer is faithful to the excellent stereo sound of the original LPs (the original cover has been retained, but not the lavish Soria booklet that accompanied the LP set). Just about my only regret: the ballet music that Verdi wrote especially for the Paris premiere, which was included on the original LPs, has not been retained here.

Vickers emerges as the finest Otello of the past 50 years - it is amazing to me that this recording from 1960 actually preceded all of his celebrated stage performances. The Canadian tenor's huge voice is used with great intelligence: he gives us the most complex, vulnerable, achingly tortured, and superbly acted Otello on disc. I think you have to go all the way back to Vinay and Martinelli to find anything remotely comparable.

Unlike several of the reviewers here, I find Rysanek's Desdemona very convincing: save for a few tenous moments, it is most beautifully sung and sympathetically acted. And what can I say about Gobbi's supremely malevolent Iago? While not one of the greatest of baritone voices, Gobbi gives us the most insinuating and thrilling Iago ever. Serafin draws magnificent playing from his Rome forces and shapes the music with the surest of hands. He opts for rather slow tempos, but they never drag.

I have heard but do not own the great 1938 Met broadcast with Giovanni Martinelli (it was on Music & Arts 645). The Chilean tenor Ramon Vinay (like Domingo and Bergonzi, he started out as a baritone) left recordings with three of the last century's greatest conductors: Wilhelm Furtwangler (1951 "live" Salzburg Festival on EMI), Arturo Toscanini (RCA), and Fritz Busch ("live" 1948 Met broadcast - mine is on Penzance LPs). For those of you with a historical bent, these are all vital performances well worth a hearing.

Vinay (heard in best voice with Busch) is similar to Vickers' anguished Moor - but he lacks the ringing high notes of the Canadian's true heldentenor voice. Furtwangler, in his only recorded Verdi opera performance, finds some lovely colors in Verdi's score: his reading is alive with symphonic insights. Unfortunately, the sound is rather poor and the rest of the cast is not very special. Dragica Martinis is a rather wan Desdemona, and Paul Schoeffler strikes me as a rather unidiomatic Iago. Toscanini is Toscanini: brisk, forceful, dramatic. His opening storm is truly volcanic in its fury - everybody else's sounds rather tame in comparison. His Iago is Valdengo, who gives a wily, brilliant performance on the same plane as Gobbi's. But Herva Nelli is a very passive and rather uninteresting Desdemona. Busch conducts a dramatic reading similar to Toscanini's, and benefits from a sympathetic Desdemona (Licia Albanese) and the most opulently sung Iago of all (Leonard Warren in fine fettle, but lacking some of the interpretive subtleties that come across so well with Gobbi).

To summarize: for an excellent Otello in modern sound, this Serafin set is surely one of the top choices. And for a supplement from the past, there are several fine sets to choose from: my choice would be the Martinelli and Vinay/Busch sets, should they re-surface on CD.

Jon Vickers' 'Esultate' is electrifying. One finds himself immediately within the drama. Vickers' Otello is one of the most powerful on record. He may lack the feeling of anguish (listen to Vinay on the Toscanini set) but he is a warrior in every way. Just listen to his 'Sangue, sangue, sangue' near the end of the second act. It will give you goosebumbs. His Desdemona isn't ideal, but Rysanek is very credible as the Virgin Mary incarnate. Tito Gobbi is ideally cast as Jago. He is not quite as evil as on the Del Monaco-Tucci recording, but nevertheless diabolical. Serafins' conducting is not the most powerful conducting one would want in a Verdi opera, but like all good opera conducters, Serafin had a natural feeling for this genre and knew how to get the best results from his singers.

When this recording came out it was panned in the press. High Fidelity Magazine and Stereo Review both preferred the simultaneously-released Otello with del Monaco and Tebaldi. Over the years, however, this recording has gained a good reputation, primarily for Jon Vickers. Here are the problems noted by those contemporary reviewers, with my comments:

1) Serafin's conducting is slow and lacking in dramatic momentum. Serafin was compared (unfavorably) with Toscanini's studio recording, noted for its ferocity and twisting-the-screws dramatic tension. Frankly, I sense the problem coming more from the orchestra than the conductor. Serafin seems to be trying to create a monumental, weighty, almost Wagnerian vision, and even in the original Sorio-series booklet he notes that "Verdi disliked rushing." The orchestra, however, is not up to it. Where one would want cleaner entrances, more unified attacks and some orchestral depth, we don't get it. How much this is a result of Serafin's age and how much the limitations of the Rome orchestra (which is not at the level of Karajan's Vienna Philarmonic, or, for that matter, La Scala), we'll never know. What we have, in the end, is a grand conception which falls short in the execution. Four stars rather than five.

2) Rysanek is a limited Desdemona because much of the part lies in an awkward area of her vocal range. There's a lot of truth in that, and the result is a more matronly sound. Some of her intonation is not too secure either (check out the opening of the Act I duet). She's not a Tebaldi, but she's emotionally involved and conveys her dramatic sense of the character. Again, four stars rather than five.

3) Vickers' performance was referred to as an apprentice's reading. He was young and very new to the part. His big voice and overwhelming presence is well-suited to Serafin's grand, weighty conception (again, more like Wagner than earlier Verdi, perhaps), and I don't think he's sunk by Serafin's slow-ish tempi. Vickers is more noble than blustery (del Monaco) or overtly emotional (Domingo), and even in Desdemona's death scene he is more a removed, God-like executioner punishing her for her sins than an overwrought jilted lover. A different but five-star performance for my taste.

4) Gobbi, toward the end of his career, has more characterization than vocal quality. Granted, in his major Act II aria his voice no longer has the strength to be truly frightening. However, his snarling, snide characterization still manages to ooze evil without going over-the-top into melodrama. Still, for me, a five-star performance, one of the best on record.

The minor roles are all done decently. The sound is typical RCA "Living Stereo" of that era, favoring smoothness over transparency but still managing to get all the details.

All in all, a version of the opera worth having. It's rare to find a recording of this opera in which all three major characters are brilliant; in this recording, it's Rysanek who's the weaker link. Serafin's conception of the piece isn't exactly in the mainstream, and if that's what you want, the del Monaco/Tebaldi/Karajan version manages to overcome del Monaco's abused, frayed voice and make quite a fierce impression. And there's always Domingo. If you want Vickers, however, this is the version to have. His later recording is with Karajan in that conductor's later years, and Vickers is so confined by Karajan's controlling, dictatorial "concept" of the opera that he doesn't really cut loose.

If we had four-and-a-half stars available, I'd give it. Get another, more mainstream version, but add this to your collection; it's well worth the listen.

Recordings of Verdi's Otello free from major shortcomings are in my experience so rare that I am only too happy to award the full 5 stars when I find such a recording, perfect or ideal though it may not be.

Such reservations as I have about this set are largely concerned with the recorded sound. This is in general not bad at all, being a digital remastering of sound dating originally from 1960. Where it seems less than totally successful is in treating the voices with a rather variable and inconsistent focus - sometimes closer, sometimes more remote. I suspect that the engineering may even have deprived us of the full benefit of the singing at times. The trills that characterise Iago's music, for one thing, were probably more vivid from Gobbi in real life than they come across here. For another, Gobbi is allowed to dominate Vickers more than I suspect he really did in the oath-taking; and while I doubt that Vickers or anyone else ever equalled (if memory serves) del Monaco at `Sangue, sangue, sangue' or in the thrilling flash on the top notes as they swear their oath, I doubt also that we are getting the full value of the treatment that Vickers gave these passages.

Other criticism that I have seen of this set centres on the perception - indisputable indeed if hardly startling - that Serafin is not Toscanini. Toscanini was unique indeed, and there is terrific fury and tension from him at the start that I never heard equalled. However such details, impressive though they are, do not provide a basis for assessing performances of Otello. That is provided by the conducting and the casting overall.

I would say that all three of Serafin's principals, but in particular his Desdemona, surpass Toscanini's. When it comes to the direction, Serafin in his way seems to me to understand this great and difficult score as well as Toscanini does. There is a peculiar atmosphere to Otello, and not everyone really grasps it. Dyneley Hussey in his book on Verdi cites some of the composer's remarks concerning Iago as indicating that Verdi was not a true Shakespearean critic, and thereby blunders straight into the smokescreen of self-attributed simplicity that Verdi liked to hide behind. Sir Edward Heath found Otello `not life-enhancing like Fidelio'. I can well believe that the naïve idealised message of Fidelio with its prisoners being released from their chains would have meant a lot more to Heath as he aspired to free Britain from the Wilson Terror, and that the electric sense of sexual tension that crackles through Otello was a territory as unknown to Heath as to Beethoven himself. Verdi's comments on Iago do not seem simplistic to me, and the character clearly fascinated him. Iago acts from pure calculated malice, something he even believes in as a doctrine. To trigger his malice all it takes is to get on his nerves, as Othello does; and while Iago's malevolence only acts on a small scale many critics have seen his character as typifying one aspect of pure evil. The music Verdi gives him, by turns portentous, grotesque and ingratiating, is complex and elusive in expression, and it is this aspect that Serafin captures with exceptional success.

Shakespeare's Othello is a very operatic tragedy in its own right, before Verdi and his librettist Boito set their own stamp on it. In many ways it might seem the simplest of the Bard's tragedies, but the character of Iago makes it, for me at least, actually the most elusive. As well as having an acute ear for that portrayal Serafin grasps what for me is another key element, namely the way Verdi stands back from the love interest despite the savage drama it gives rise to. The love duet is surpassingly beautiful in an idyllic way, but one has only to think of Tristan to hear the difference between a genuinely erotic drama and the hypertense atmosphere of suspected sexual betrayal and vengefulness out of control that Verdi evokes.

All that, plus the singing of Vickers and Gobbi, leaves me wanting to rate this performance in the highest bracket. The set includes an elaborate booklet containing everything necessary, such as a summary of the plot together with the full libretto (translated into English only, you may be pleased to hear). There are also two sympathetic and informative, if slightly rambling, liner essays. Perfection remains elusive, but I wonder whether I would even know it if I encountered it when it comes to this work.

This is an outstanding recording. Jon Vickers's Otello is achingly tormented, Leonie Rysanek's Desdemona hauntingly beautiful and Tito Gobbi's Iago deviously manipulative. Shakespeare meets Verdi and it is a strong encounter. Chorus and orchestra are suberb under the veteran Tulio Serafin. Excellent sound.

This is a wonderful rendition of Otello. The overall performance is great and the sound quality is quite good. Unlike one of the other reviewers, I do like Rysanek as Desdemona. Her mature voice brings depth to the role, and she is a pleasure to listen to. Rysanek's interpretation makes the final act almost a religious experience. Highly recommended.

The overwhelming propotion of raves for this Otello amazes me, because to my ears the detractors are right. Without dipping into the one-star dungeon, I agree that Serafin is far past his prime and conducts a limp performance without pace and variety. The aging meastro similarly sinks Tebaldi's Madame Butterfly on Decca. As much respect as he deserves and given all the adulation by his protogee Maria Callas, Serafin is a major debit here.

I'm also concerned about Rysanek, whom I long avoided because of the odd throaty timbre of her voice. On stage she was, apparently, a riveting actress who brought total commitment to every role, and there's also no doubt that she was a skilled vocal actress. But I don't hear a real Desdemona, merely a talented singer trying to scale down her big voice and doing her best to approximate Verdian style. A near miss.

As for Vickers, he was so magnificent in this role and recorded it to such moving effect for Karajan, I wanted to hear him in younger voice. (Actully, Otello doesn't need to sound young, since he's an embattled veteran and a general -- in Shakespeare, his age as well as his Moorish blackness scandalized Desdemona's father when the couple elope.) As pure singing, Vickers' performance is striking, but he's awkward at Verdi style, and Serafin's slack pacing seems to deprive the tenor of much dramatic impetus. In the end, Vickers didn't so much master Verdi as overcome him by brute force.

In all, I didn't set out to write a contrarian review, but to my ears this is a fairly objective assessment of what's to be heard on this disappointing recording.

It has been often said that Toscanini's recording with Ramon Vinay boasts the finest team ever to have been recorded on disc. I think that Vinay, along with Toscanini, made for a fine team at the studios when they conducted the opera, but Herva Nelli as Desdemona and Giuseppe Valdengo as Iago don't quite match up to the very best of Serafin's cast.

In many respects, I find Vicker's Otello to be the best in the discography. Not only is he in possession of possibly the largest tenor voice in existence. The haunting quality, the beautiful mezza voce, and Vicker's temperament make his Otello the most formidable on records too. However lyric and beautiful Domingo's interpretation is, he comes nowhere near the viper-like Moor of Vickers. Whenever the Canadian heldentenor sings, it sounds like a serpent ready to strike, coiled when relaxed, but hissing like a Basilisk when provoked. His Esultate is magnificent and commanding, his love duet hauntingly beautiful, his conversations with Iago sinister, and his final scene tragic. He is the definitive Otello.

Tito Gobbi's Iago is another reason to get this recording. Although recorded late in his career, Gobbi is still very much the virile singing actor that he was when he partnered Callas in their legendary Tosca. In this recording, Gobbi snarls and connives as Iago. His tone is perfect for the character's intents, and I find that the way he plays with his voice makes for a most compelling performance. Only Leonard Warren would ever come close to what Gobbi achieved in this role, in many ways the finest performance of his career. One would only wonder what Bastianini would have done with the part had he lived long enough.

Leonie Rysanek's Desdemona is often criticized for sounding too mature for the role. In many ways, I think this great vocal actress brings out many of the unheard aspects of the role--the underlying characteristics that most "blonde" Desdemonas miss in their interpretations of the part. Her Willow song is perfectly sung without any of the "Straussian" effects that would mar her latter performances. Only Victoria de los Angeles and Renata Tebaldi could be ranked with such a great performer.

The main reason to buy this recording would of course be Tullio Serafin's magisterial conducting of Verdi's score. While his orchestra may not be as refined as Karajan's or Chung's, his vision of the score is majestic, grand and tragic. He presents perhaps the most Verdian vision of the score next to Toscanini's, and for his conducting would I highly recommend this recording.

Notwithstanding some imperfections noted by other reviewers, the recording is THE Otello on disc. It is too violent for some but having just read another volume on Verdi and his music, I am convinced that this is what he was looking for: Shakespeare +. Noteworthy that at a recent Verdi commemorative festival in Paris, the opening night was featuring John Vickers as THE Otello of our times, perhaps of all times.