Word: iago
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...libretto. In Otello, however, flashbacks to the Moor's slave childhood are maudlin, and Zeffirelli's camera, jumping edgily from storm to massed choruses to brawls and bedrooms, tires the mind. As Otello, Tenor Placido Domingo is in robust voice, and Bass Justino Diaz makes a splendidly vile Iago. Yet Zeffirelli's presumption in heavily editing Verdi's taut masterpiece serves neither movie audiences nor opera lovers well, and the patina of homoeroticism that suffuses the film contradicts the heterosexual spirit of both libretto and score. No wonder he cut Desdemona's big number...
...Flores. As an impoverished nobleman in the Vermandero household, De Flores is the instrument of Beatrice-Joanna's downfall, and he oozes evil. Fine-tuned to gruesome perfection by Bottoms (here of the shiny bald pate and knock-kneed posture), De Flores is a cross between Igor and Iago, first fawning on Beatrice-Joanna, then exacting fealty--and a whole lot more--for being...
Reputation, of all human possessions, is perhaps the least tangible yet the most zealously guarded. To be known for integrity and honor, most people willingly labor a lifetime. Even a rogue may cherish the mistaken notion that he enjoys the respect of his community. As Shakespeare's foulest villain, Iago, puts it in Othello, "Good name in man and woman is the immediate jewel of their souls." That is why the concepts of slander and libel, and of the right of the aggrieved to seek redress for defamation, were introduced into English common law during the Middle Ages...
...hour evening. His singing in Act I was careful but not tentative; he infused Lohengrin's valedictory to his swan with the wistful Italianate warmth of a love song. In the second act, he sang passionately as Lohengrin tries to protect Elsa, his betrothed, from Ortrud's Iago-like machinations. By the third act, he was in full command, delivering the difficult Grail narration, in which Lohengrin sorrowfully reveals his identity and his obligation to leave Elsa, with power and poignancy. It may not have been idiomatic, but it was elegant and persuasive...
...Central Park for Joseph Papp's first summer offering will soon perceive that Kevin Kline does not fit that description. It is not a question of some malformation of body à la Elephant Man, it is a question of a cancerously aberrant soul. Richard III lies somewhere between Iago, with his "motiveless malignity," and Macbeth, who has "supp'd full of horrors" in his naked, unbridled lust for power...