Word: desdemona
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...intention of giving up Wagner, but she hopes to try some of her new roles (Aïda, La Gioconda, Desdemona) at the Met next year. Manhattan has been cordial to her; but dependable Astrid can't help feeling a special affection for demonstrative Mexico City: "It's such fun here. If they like you, they just won't let you offstage...
...years he has been on loving terms with his ex-wife (Signe Hasso), who plays Desdemona. But as he settles down into a long run, and really gets hold of his role, it takes an ever tighter hold on him. He begins to suspect his pressagent (Edmond O'Brien) of being a backstage Cassio. He also experiences some sickening sideslips into full loss of identity. The company becomes more & more nervous about the frightening sincerity with which he plays his strangling scene with Desdemona. Will he finally go completely bats and commit murder...
...mustache-the little cellist himself was stopping other cellists, screaming at violinists, and cajoling a 50-voice chorus. He was rehearsing one of the year's memorable musical events-a broadcast of the entire opera Otello, in two Saturday broadcasts, an hour and a quarter each. "This Is Desdemona." For weeks the Maestro had been getting set for his one opera broadcast of the year. He had hand-picked his singers, rehearsed them relentlessly in his dressing room, accompanying them on the piano himself. There were few big bright names in his cast-he preferred to use singers...
Lesser parts are competently, though not brilliantly performed. James Monks, of "The Eve of Saint Mark," does the best job of the minor players as Cassio, another victim of Iago's treachery. Uta Hagen is a very frail and very dainty, but also a very spiritless Desdemona. Margaret Webster, who directed the present revival, plays Emilia, Iago's wife, completely straight. She adds not one touch of her own which would let the audience know whether she is working for or against her villainous mate...
Progressing to dramatic criticism, Hazlitt stirred up a histrionic storm by suggesting, in the modern vein, that what appealed to Shakespeare's Desdemona most was Othello's dark skin. Cried Critic Henry Crabb Robinson: "A gross attack on the pretensions to chastity in women." As political commentator, Hazlitt was even more savage. He once called the future Duke of Wellington "a weak mind and an able body," King Ferdinand of Spain "a royal marmoset." If he had not written so brilliantly, he might soon have found no editor to publish him. Hazlitt sometimes confused integrity with tactlessness...