Word: moorings
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Thus begins the Orson Welles version of Othello, with the joint funeral of the Moor and Desdemona, and the imaginative execution of Iago. The entire film is prefigured by this non-Shakespearean opening sequence: the sense of evil leading to tragic death, the theme of innocent beauty wronged, the symbolic imprisonment of man in a cage of passion...
Shadows create the sense of gloom for the entire film, damping even a victory celebration. Darkness pervades the alleys where gleeful soldiers cavort with Cyprian women. The transition of Othello's mind from conscientious administrator to maddened husband is reflected in the darkening of the weather as the Moor's thoughts plummet...
...successes behind him, McCracken went to Washington, D.C., three years ago to sing his first Otello. His mastery of the part won him other bookings in it, and since then he has sung the role more than 50 times in ten different productions. For all his familiarity with the Moor, he still dwells on Otello's mysteries and often the tragedy of it gets to him. ''Sometimes the death of Otello affects me so much," he says, "that tears fall and I begin to choke up. That's no good. The audience gets nothing...
...years at Baylor University. Drama Professor Paul Baker turned the Texas Baptist school into a renowned center of experimental theater. The Waco wizard's 1953 Othello split the tortured Moor into three separate characters; later he got Actor Burgess Meredith to be anchor prince in a three-faceted Hamlet. To train graduate students, in 1959 he opened a stunning repertory theater in Dallas, the only theater designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. In baffled admiration, the late Charles Laughton once called Baker "crude, irritating, arrogant, nuts and a genius...
...church has already canonized on Negro, St. Benedict the Moor, a 16th century Franciscan whose parents were slaves from Africa; he was declared a saint...