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Verdi - Otello / Karajan, Vickers, Freni, Berlin Philharmonic
 
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Verdi - Otello / Karajan, Vickers, Freni, Berlin Philharmonic (1974)

Starring: Jon Vickers, Mirella Freni Director: Roger Benamou Rating: NR (Not Rated) Format: DVD
3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)


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Editorial Reviews

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Verdi's Otello is a larger-than-life role, calling for a tenor of Wagnerian vocal power and stage presence. In the late 20th century, two singers fully met its specifications--Jon Vickers and Placido Domingo. Both were filmed in video productions of unusual quality, and a choice between them boils down, ultimately, to a question of personal taste. In this 1973 production, Vickers is given an effective context to set off his powerful, carefully considered characterization. Mirella Freni is an appealing Desdemona, Peter Glossop is a credibly vicious Iago, and the cast is solid right down to the very young future star Jose van Dam in a small supporting role. The chorus and orchestra rank with the world's best.

Herbert von Karajan's direction, musical and theatrical, is a source of both strength and shortcomings. His power and prestige allowed him to assemble stellar casts and to scoff at budget limitations. He was also able to take the production beyond the opera house's visual limitations with on-location filming, an opportunity that is exploited with powerful impact in the storm-at-sea scene that opens this Otello. His personal musical taste sometimes tended to favor polish at the expense of expressive intensity. But he does present Verdi's score intact, without the cuts made in the 1986 cinematic production directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring Domingo. Personally, I find the Zeffirelli Otello dramatically compelling, but Von Karajan's--or Georg Solti's 1992 version with Domingo and Kiri Te Kanawa--is closer to what Verdi had in mind. --Joe McLellan

Product Description
Cast list

Jon Vickers: Otello
Mirella Freni: Desdemona
Peter Glossop: Iago
Stefania Malagu: Emilia
Aldo Bottion: Cassio
Michel Sénéchal: Roderigo
José van Dam: Lodovico
Mario Macchi: Montano

Berlin Philharmonic and Berlin Opera Chorus, Herbert von Karajan, conductor


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Customer Reviews

13 Reviews
5 star:
 (3)
4 star:
 (6)
3 star:
 (3)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.8 out of 5 stars (13 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The best video "Otello", August 16, 2002
By Robert G. VanStryland (Denton, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)      
This film by Hebert von Karajan is the best rendition of Verdi's "Otello" available in any video format. The conducting and singing are superb and the drama is expressed with the utmost intensity. Jon Vickers is the best Otello in recent memory, superior even to Placido Domingo in vocal and dramatic power. Mirella Freni is a bit light-voiced for Desdemona, but she sings beautifully and looks like an angel. Peter Glossop sings the role of Iago with beauty and power, and sets just the right tone of evil playfulness. Picture and sound quality are both just fine. The supporting cast is wonderful, too, and includes Jose van Dam (Lodovico) and Michel Senechal (Roderigo).

Karajan's cinematography is not as polished as Zeffirelli's, but it does present the essentials of the drama honestly and straightforwardly. The Zeffirelli film, although it has an excellent cast and looks beautiful, is an abomination. Starting with a perfectly good soundtrack, Zeffirelli proceeded to destroy Verdi's dramatic and musical conception by cutting out little snippets of the score (seemingly almost at random) to bring his movie to a length of less than two hours. As far as I know, his film has never been issued on DVD. I hope nobody bothers with it. Karajan's film is more stagebound and the lip synch isn't perfect, but his version is complete and dramatically compelling.

There are two other good renditions of this opera on DVD: a London (Royal Opera) performance with Placido Domingo, Kiri Te Kanawa, and Sergei Leiferkus and a 1958 RAI telecast with Mario del Monaco, Rosanna Carteri, and Renato Capecchi, conducted by Tullio Serafin. The London performance is beautifully played and sung, but it's dramatically less intense than Karajan's film. The Italian telecast is a wonderful historical document, but it is better to hear than it is to see. The monaural sound is good and the black and white picture is clear enough, but the singers don't always appear comfortable lip-synching to a prerecorded sound track. Nevertheless, I recommend that you get it for the remarkable performances of del Monaco and Capecchi. But if you're looking for the one best "Otello" video, Karajan's is it.

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17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A MAGNIFICENT OTELLO AND SUPERLATIVE KARAJAN, January 28, 2003
By "jfmaniaci" (Broadbeach, Queensland, Australia) - See all my reviews
Verdi's Otello is the finest tragic opera ever written. The genial poet Boito wrote a beautifully compressed libretto that inspired Verdi to compose intensely dramatic, dynamic and complex music for great arias, duets and choral singing. Otello' s triumph over the Turks "Esultate!", the sweet and ethereal duet between Otello and his bride Desdemona "Già nella notte densa", Jago's cynical view on life "Credo in un Dio crudel", the revengeful oath-taking duet "Sì, pel Ciel marmoreo giuro!", Otello's regret for lost happiness "Dio, mi potevi scagliare", the andante then frenetic pezzo concertato of acclaims "Viva! Evviva!" (Venetian dignitaries, heralds, soldiers, Ladies and Gentlemen) ingrained with brooding soliloquies and utterances "...Emilia, una gran nube turba il senno d"Otello..." (Lodovico, Otello, Desdemona, Emilia, Jago), Desdemona's soulful prayer "Ave Maria", Otello's dishevelled suicide "Niun mi tema" and last heroic whisper "un altro bacio", the opera ending with two soft but solemn orchestral bars.

On 5 February 1887 at the Teatro alla Scala, Milano, Verdi staged the world premiere of Otello after 16 years of silence. During that period, he reflected for a long time on his experience and the musical evolution of opera. He felt he had to conceive successfully something new to stay abreast of times. Otello was born. Boito became a decisive collaborator. He wrote the libretto "a struttura continua" which allowed the great master to break the old scheme of arias, duets, recitatives and develop a completely continuous discourse.

Jon Vickers - The great Canadian tenor was born in 1926 at Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. After studying under George Lampert in Toronto, he made his debut in 1954 as the Duke of Mantua (Rigoletto) with the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto. During an illustrious career spanning over 28 years, he sang a variety of roles excelling in Beethoven's Fidelio as Florestan, the Wagnerians Siegmund, Parsifal and Tristan, the Italians Canio and Otello, the French Don José and the English Peter Grimes, in most of the major theatres of the world. His debut as Otello dates back to 1970 during the Salzburg Festival where he sang the role for the ensuing two years.

In this 1974 rendition of Otello, one senses Vickers' mastery of the role and profound identification with the character throughout. When called upon to put on show the arduous vocality of Otello, some mediocrity creeps in. "Esultate" is not in the Lauri-Volpi or Del Monaco's glorious Italian tradition, the key words "Vien" and "un bacio" in the ethereal, amorous duet "Già nella notte densa" are whispered although some redemption is restored with a well sustained mezza voce in "...Venere splende", the ferocious and solemn oath-taking duet with Jago is a bit disappointing at the end, where "Dio vendicator" is a surprisingly short and colourless squillo, "Dio, mi potevi scagliare" is good in the piano monotone but colourless in the squillo "...Oh, gioia!" but "Niun mi tema" is quite a remarkable fraseggio. His Italian diction is fair.

Mirella Freni - She belongs to the cream of Italian sopranos who made singing history from Storchio, Pandolfini, Favero, Pampanini, Olivero and recently to Scotto. Her Mimì was the most celebrated, perhaps the greatest of all Puccini's frail seamstresses. For vocal, expressive and scenic qualities, she became household name at Salzburg as Zerlina, Susanna, Elisabetta di Valois, last but not least Desdemona in the repertoire of the Austrian city' supreme son, Herbert von Karajan. Freni never performed better with any other conductor than with Karajan.

In this 1974 edition of Otello, her Desdemona is cajoled, inspired, advised, even pushed by Karajan to use colours, refinements and sfumature to which she was not used. Her amorous canto in the love duet, the passionate, pure-hearted and exhilarating lament "A terra...si...nel livido fango..." prostrate on the floor of the castle hall of ceremonies in front of the stupefied Venetian dignitaries, the meditative, sad recollections in the Willow song and soulful prayer "Ave Maria" in her bed chamber are striking proof of an exceptional voice-orchestra fusion.

Peter Glossop - A distinguished English baritone born in Sheffield and an excellent interpreter of the Italian Romantic Opera at Covent Garden and the major theatres of the world. His repertoire included Rigoletto, Count di Luna, Scarpia, Simon Boccanegra, Guy de Montfort (I Vespri Siciliani) and Jago. He had voice for sale, warm, expressive accents and great acting ability. His Rigoletto in particular was a voice of decades gone by.

In this 1974 edition of Otello, his Jago is almost unmatched. His scenic presence is imposing, gestures and facial expressions, supported by a good mezza voce, weave a diabolical cynicism of nearly Tito Gobbi's dimensions while his "Credo in un Dio crudel" crowns him as the Mephistophelean villain so much aspired by Verdi, who found the monologue "most beautiful and wholly Shakespearean!"

Herbert von Karajan - A native of Salzburg, he was only nineteen when he became permanent conductor at the Opera of Ulm in 1927, of Aquisgraine from 1935 to 1942, took the place of the great Wilhelm Furtwangler as conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker in 1954 and became the Salzburg Festival director in 1956. He conducted in Italy frequently by interpreting Wagner and Mozart but also the Italian masters' operas, including Lucia, Falstaff, Traviata, Boheme and Cavalleria rusticana. He interpreted Tosca in Berlin, Trovatore in Vienna and Don Carlos at Salzburg. He was admired for a vast symphonic and operatic repertoire, conducting authority, live, incisive and dramatic style, great plasticity and constant pursuit of sound, vocal and orchestral beauty.

In this 1974 edition of Otello, Karajan is the orchestra conductor, artistic and stage director. Known for his unsurpassable analytical ability, he leads the orchestra to a dismembering of each detail of the score with the best timbre possible. The tempi and sound of this Otello as interpreted and executed by Karajan are majestic, glorious, solemn, totally innovative and mesmerising.

The staging is outdoors and not on the theatre platform. It is confined, done exquisitely and gives the impression of a stage production despite that the act I tempest scene is real and shot on the screen. The picture quality is excellent. The sound is superb stereo. Beautifully illustrated, the booklet is in English, German and French, contains a synopsis of the opera, no libretto but a partition of each act into the salient arias, duets, ensembles each accompanied by a very informative sequence of the plot and corresponding DVD track number.

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Vickers is Otello, November 17, 2001
By A Customer
I bought the disc for two reasons: first, that I had the pleasure of seeing Vickers in this role at Covent Garden in the early 1980s (a memory I would not trade for worlds); and second, that I'm always on the lookout for operas filmed cinematically rather than just taped stage productions. Vickers is every bit as powerful, vocally and otherwise, in this production as he was on stage, besides being paired with a superb Desdemona in Mirella Freni. The sound is luscious, though perhaps the dynamic range is too broad. As for the staging, it is a bit "stagey" despite the liberation of the camera from the proscenium view; even the storm lashing the beach looks suspiciously like buckets of water being tossed onto the stage. But what we have here is an honest attempt to present the opera as an opera rather than as a movie in the Zeffirelli style. The burden of the performance is on the performers, not on the cinematographers, and they carry it creditably. The picture quality is excellent. Overall the disc is a wonderful record of one of the great roles in operatic history: Vickers as Otello.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good, with minor flaws
This film version of Verdi's Othello -- directed and conducted by Herbert Von Karajan, a man of many talents -- is excellent in many respects, and more than adequate in most. Read more
Published on December 14, 2006 by K. Kehler

5.0 out of 5 stars Make that five stars with some reservations
Prior to buying this, I already owned two magnificent DVDs of Otello, so why bother with a third? First, this is a film as opposed to a staged production, so I was curious about... Read more
Published on May 16, 2006 by C. Boerger

3.0 out of 5 stars Great performance, frustrating audio
I purchased this performance in its laser disc format a number of years ago and got rid of it because the audio portion is made of extremes. Read more
Published on July 14, 2005 by William Eisenberg

3.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful performance - frustrating audio
I purchased this performance in its laser disc format a number of years ago and got rid of it because the audio portion is made of extremes. Read more
Published on July 13, 2005 by William Eisenberg

4.0 out of 5 stars A filmed document to cherish
The lip-synching distractions that mar most opera films isn't too bad here. I found it tolerable and didn't prevent me from enjoying most of this DVD. Read more
Published on June 13, 2004 by Bernal Jimenez

1.0 out of 5 stars Listen to it with your eyes closed
While there is no question that Vickers is one of the greatest interpreters of Otello since Ramon Vinay, this DVD is an absolute disgrace. Read more
Published on March 23, 2004

3.0 out of 5 stars Not what I expected
I rate this DVD as 3 stars, because I really got dissapointed with it. The main weekness of this production is Jago, what a bad choice by Karajan. Read more
Published on May 29, 2002 by George Khelashvili

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Document of Otello
This truly is one of the great documents of Otello available. Vickers is amazing in the title role, creating many moments that are literally hair-raising. Read more
Published on February 3, 2002 by J. Barry-Smith

4.0 out of 5 stars excellent opera movie, with white hot drama
I bought this DVD simply because I had seen the opening of this film on TV before. And surely watching that opening alone is worth all the money. Read more
Published on July 19, 2001

4.0 out of 5 stars An exciting production in every sense
This production of Otello is indeed a masterpiece. The performances of the three principals -- Jon Vickers as Otello, Mirella Freni as Desdemona and Peter Glossop as the... Read more
Published on July 15, 2001 by Brian Wrangham

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