Word: desdemona
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...tenor seizes the title role like Domingo, whose vocal potency and dramatic intensity have redefined the part. As Desdemona, Carol Vaness caresses Verdi's most beautiful music with a pure, radiant soprano, while in the pit, Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, making his Met debut, leads the score with raw power and passion. The live radio broadcast is April 2; be prepared to be taken by storm...
...Titians, Michael Yeargan's new designs are nearly as lavish, but they are more subdued, allowing director Elijah Moshinsky to personalize the drama. Otello clutches his head in pain after his triumphant conquest of the Turks in Act I, prefiguring his complete moral and physical collapse two acts later; Desdemona tenderly but gingerly strokes her husband's face at their reunion, her love already mingled with fear...
...Lies to cause harm, or "Trust me on this one." The role model here is Shakespeare's Iago, insidiously, malevolently and falsely poisoning Othello's mind against his faithful wife Desdemona. These are the lies people fear and resent the most, statements that will not only deceive them but also trick them into foolish or ruinous courses of behavior. Curiously, though, lying to hurt people just for the hell or the fun of it -- the Iago syndrome -- is probably quite rare. Though Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote influentially about Iago's "motiveless malignity," the play itself does not really support this...
Alas, Welles' first independent production gave him, for his pains, a world of sighs. Backers kept promising funds, then withdrawing them. Suzanne Cloutier, who played Desdemona, would act as seductress to Welles' potential patrons. "He would dress me in full costume," she recalls, "and we'd visit the King of the Berbers. I'd lie on a couch, and we'd try to convince this king to give us his army for extras...
...pigeons scatter up into an angry sky. The spider-webbery of shadows casts doom across an innocent face. It is a canvas, of baroque silhouettes and diagonals rampant, that marries text to texture in vintage film-noir style. Othello: the postwar man who feels betrayed by his wife. Desdemona: the innocent woman brutalized by her suspicious spouse...