Otello

Photo courtesy of Intermezzo

5 out of 5 stars – The Telegraph
“The outstanding performance was that of Gerald Finley as Iago.” Opera

To be released on 25 October 2010 as a CD under the LSO Live label. Click cover for more details

Composer: Giuseppe Verdi
Librettist: Arrigo Boito, after Shakespeare
Venue and Dates: Barbican Hall, London
3, 6 December 2009 7:00 PM
Conductor: Sir Colin Davis
Performers:
Otello : Simon O’Neill (replacing indisposed Torsten Kerl)
Jago : Gerald Finley
Cassio : Allan Clayton
Desdemona : Anne Schwanewilms
Emilia : Eufemia Tufano
Lodovico : Alexander Tsymbalyuk
Montano : Matthew Rose
Rodrigo: Ben Johnson
Herold: Lukas Jakobski
London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
Notes: Gerry’s role premiere
Simon O’Neill’s role premiere

Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph, Saturday 28 November 2009:

Where to go, What to see

In recent years, Sir Colin Davis has been returning to many of the works he conducted earlier in his career. For this London Symphony Orchestra concert performance of Verdi’s Shakespearean masterpiece, the title role is taken by the Norwegian tenor Torsten Kerl, with Anne Schwanewilms as Desdemona, and the great baritone Gerald Finley making his debut as lago. Listen out too for the up-and-coming English tenor Allan Clayton as Cassio.

Photo Gallery

Photos courtesy of Intermezzo unless otherwise stated

What the critics say

Simon Thomas, What on Stage, 4 December 2009

Four Star Rating

If we needed reminding that Sir Colin Davis is a national treasure, Nicholas Kenyon’s announcement of the Queen’s Medal awarded to him for services to music was an opportunity for a standing ovation before we’d heard one note of Otello.

Over the last few years, the LSO Live CD label has built up into an impressive catalogue of recordings, based on live performances by the orchestra, mostly under its former Principal Conductor (now President).

Of the late quartet of Verdi operas, they have already tackled Falstaff and now add Otello to the list, drawn from last night’s concert performance, which is repeated on Sunday.

One could be forgiven, in the first half of the evening, for thinking that the principals, although among the finest of acting singers around today, were not quite comfortable in the Italian repertoire.

A fine Wagnerian, Simon O’Neill did a grand job as Otello, standing in at very short notice for an indisposed Torsten Kerl, but one couldn’t help feeling he wasn’t quite on top of things. Forgiveable, as he was in part sight-reading, so an extraordinary achievement anyway.

Anne Schwanewilms is a great Straussian (when will we see her Marschallin at Covent Garden?) but she seemed ill at ease with the Italian language and Gerald Finley gave Iago all his considerable acting skills and gorgeously rich bass-baritone but didn’t come across as a natural Verdian.

The LSO was magnificent in the opening of Act 1 and the glorious end of the second but nevertheless had its wobbles along the way and even the London Symphony Chorus had a few dodgy moments, particularly in the second act flower chorus, which Davis took at a hell of a lick.

If one felt slight discomfort by the interval, everything came together in the second half. The Act 3 ensemble was ravishing and Act 4 was simply sublime. Schwanewilms’ “Willow Song” was utterly beautiful, with a still, concentrated sadness that only she among current sopranos can bring, and the playing matched her. O’Neill’s “Niun me tema” was almost unbearably moving, showing that he has a great Otello in him and it’s not too far out of reach.

Support was strong throughout the evening. If one is tempted to liken Ben Johnson’s Rodrigo and Allan Clayton’s Cassio to Ant and Dec, it didn’t detract from the beauty of their singing and the contrast between Finley’s mature, glowering Iago and their youthful appearance paid off, as this malevolent Don Alfonso manipulated the boys to his evil ends.

The baritones, Matthew Rose’s resonant Montano and Alexander Tsymbalyuk’s handsome Lodovico, were both outstanding and Eufemia Tufano was a sympathetic and rich Emilia.

If the first half of Sunday’s performance can rise to the same heights, this will be another LSO Live recording to treasure.

Edward Seckerson, The Independent, 4 December 2009

Rated 4 out of 5 Stars

The real “Lion of Venice” here was Sir Colin Davis – 80-something going on 40-something and every inch the commander in chief as the mighty storm at the outset of Verdi’s Otello exploded from the Barbican platform.

Davis had just been awarded the Queen’s Medal for Music 2009 but despite half the audience rising to its feet on his entrance Davis’ only priority was to harness his London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and brave out that storm. It was, to use the maestro’s own parlance, a terrific racket, the chorus’s words as incisive as the piccolo-flecked lightening strafing the horizon, the orchestra sinewy and emphatic, brass blazing in a way that is rarely experienced from the pit of an opera house. Lots of wonderful orchestral detail would be forthcoming.

The triumphant Moor then made his entrance – an eleventh hour replacement: Torsten Kerl was ill and New Zealander Simon O’Neill strode forward to deliver his celebrated vocal fanfare. So far, so very good – O’Neill has a real trumpet-toned top to his voice and like all true warriors he is fearless. And because so many famous exponents of the role – including Domingo – are firmly in the more baritonal heldentenor mould it was refreshing, no thrilling, to hear a young singer really nail those crazed top notes. His martial outburst in act two had splendid rigour. For sure O’Neill lacked the middle-voice heft and shrouded darkness for the harrowing third act monologue but he was not found wanting in any other respect, indeed his sensitive and expressive way with text truly brought a lump to the throat in the great final scene.

I’m afraid, though, the object of all his agony – the Desdemona of Anne Schwanewilms – was far from ideal casting. We’ve heard great things from this German soprano but the Italian style completely eluded her. Why her reluctance to use the enticement of portamento? It might well have helped her find the natural shape of the phrasings. As it was the voice was neither true enough in intonation (disturbingly off-pitch at times) nor fluid enough of line to do justice to Desdemona’s exquisite music.

Gerald Finley’s sonorous and charismatic Iago was more gracious, more mellifluous, with the musical line, his deceits positively slipping off the tongue, his “covered” ingratiations veiling the evil intent. A tremendous performance, a whiff of theatricality in every line.

And so it was, too, with the whole of the resourcefully cast ensemble. Collectively they gave us a tremendous account of the great third act climax, public and private sound and fury colliding with a force that still resonates.

Stephen Jay-Taylor, OperaBritannia, 5 December 2009

4 ½ out of 5 Stars

It’s a funny old world. Colin Davis was the Music Director at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden for thirteen years throughout the 1970s and early 80s, and during this time he inevitably, though seemingly with some reluctance, conducted a number of Verdi operas there which most of us attending as regulars came to dread as musical occasions, so sluggish, apologetically genteel and almost comically unidiomatic were they. He first undertook Otello in 1972, with Vickers and Joan Carlyle, but subsequent revivals in the house fell to the likes of Mackerras and Mehta until, early in 1980, Carlos Kleiber caused an absolute sensation with Domingo in his house debut in the title role. The fact that Davis himself then conducted another revival later the same year – albeit with Vickers – only served, almost cruelly, to emphasise the difference. With Davis’s departure from Covent Garden in1983, never to assume a titular position in any other opera house thereafter, most people would have imagined his Verdian account to have been closed for good, a likely source of sorrow, one rather felt, neither to the audience nor himself, for all that he had conducted Otello there more than any other Verdi work, and had even effectively bowed-out with it in the November of that year (with Domingo, Ricciarelli and Cappuccilli, no less).

And there, for any of us knew, the matter might have rested, a simple case – Falstaff apart, which he always did conduct superbly – of mismatched musical sympathies. But in September 1997, Georg Solti – Davis’s predecessor at the Royal Opera House – died unexpectedly a few weeks shy of his 85th birthday, and mere days before he was due to conduct Verdi’s Requiem at that year’s Proms with the London Symphony Orchestra, of which Davis had been the Principal Conductor since 1995. Sir Colin stepped in to the breach at very much the eleventh hour, and in the event conducted a performance of such blazing energy and blistering fervour, seismic and stunning, that many, myself included, wondered whether he had simply given the performance Solti had been unable to, summoned up as a kind of in memoriam (this is not so utterly strange, or unprecedented, as you might think: I once heard Mackerras conduct Goodall’s Die Walküre, all three weeks of it; and Lorin Maazel gave Klemperer’s account of Mahler’s 7th, longer than the transatlantic cable). The matter was really only resolved definitively when, as part of the happily ongoing series of concert performances of operas that Sir Colin inaugurated as his signature contribution to the LSO’s musical pre-eminence, he programmed Otello at the Barbican in 1999, with José Cura (one of the better performances he ever gave in London), Carlos Alavrez as Iago, and Andrea Danková as Desdemona. Though several aspects of the singing left something to be desired, and there were irritating minor cuts, Davis’s contribution confirmed what the Requiem had suggested: Verdi was suddenly, unexpectedly, very much his type of music, conducted with his perennial fastidious care for balance and unforced expression, but now with added temperament and theatrical flair in spades.

He has since given us, in concert, an exemplary and scintillatingly brilliant Falstaff; and shown definitively earlier this year that the Requiem remains, under him, an experience of transcendental power and spirituality. Now, ten years on, he gives us another Otello, cast with sovereign disregard for the conventional repertory niceties with nary an Italian, or indeed even remotely Italianate, singer in sight, bar the Emilia of Eufemia Tufano (in the event, ironically, the one weak link amongst all the soloists). For the rest, the plan was obviously Anglo-German, with Torsten Kerl in the title role, Anne Schwanewilms as Desdemona, the Canadian-born, (musically) London-reared Gerald Finley as Iago, and the English Allan Clayton as Cassio. However, the best laid plans……

Torsten Kerl sang the dress rehearsal performance of this Otello on Tuesday, but subsequently succumbed to some seasonal vocal affliction necessitating his last-minute cancellation. Instead, Otello was sung tonight by the New Zealander, Simon O’Neill, who has already made a great impression at the ROH as Siegmund and Lohengrin, and single-handedly provided true distinction of singing and utterance, as Florestan, in Barenboim’s otherwise grisly Fidelio at this year’s Proms. O’Neill has never sung Otello in public before: indeed, I am reliably informed that certain passages of the score involving ensemble work he has never even particularly looked at before (having no plan to sing the role until 2012); and that his one and only rehearsal of the whole work in effect took place before us this evening, with a fair amount of sight-reading involved. Under the circumstances, it would be only to be expected that certain things were not quite right, or that interpretative insight was perhaps lacking, or that in some measure the fearsome vocal demands of the role weren’t entirely met.

Except, they were, all of them. I heard both Vickers and Domingo many dozens of times in the role, and retain fond memories of Carlo Cossutta and James McCracken (ugly-sounding, but hair-raisingly elemental). I am not at all sure that Simon O’Neill doesn’t have, at least in some respects, the edge on all of them. For one thing, though clinging to his score like a limpet mine (not head-buried in it, but held aloft at chest height, which makes all the difference to communication) he was supernaturally accurate in his account, nothing crooned, fudged, approximated or reduced to Sprechstimme (I mean, when did you last – or ever – hear “Dio! mi potevi scagliar” actually sung as written?). For another, the voice, though absolutely not Italian-sounding, has a clean, clear, effortless clarion ring to it – think maybe James King, or Wunderlich – that struck me as plain thrilling. The opening “Esultate” was as rock-solidly focussed, powerfully projected as I’ve ever heard, not the usual honking bronze (if you’re lucky) but somehow more like silvery-blue tempered steel; and yet the plaintive tone required by the love duet, including an exquisitely floated, plumb-in-tune “Venere splende” at the very end was effortlessly, most beautifully forthcoming.

I suspect that, like most heldentenors, O’Neill’s very top is not exactly easy, sounding appreciably harder work on the Bs than the B-flats (which had really tremendous spin and ring on them). But that’s nothing unusual, and scarcely a problem in this of all roles (though I’d worry if I were him about the upcoming ROH Walther von Stolzings, a different and altogether higher-lying kettle of fish). But for what must be termed, purely factually, a first attempt at Otello under entirely unpropitious circumstances, I think it only fair to judge O’Neill’s performance as a triumph. What he will make of the role in future – indeed, in certain respects, what he can possibly bring to it that he hasn’t already apart from body make-up – I await with impatience. Perhaps the mad-dog sense of pain that Vickers had, or Domingo’s burnished, yet sneering sarcasm. We’ll see, and in short-order I sincerely trust.

Schwanewilms being the greatest living exponent of the slightly squeezed, tubular, almost instrumental purity of timbre that characterised so many great German (or Germanic) sopranos – Janowitz, Popp, Varady all spring to mind – I was unsure as to how her flute-like, softly metallic timbre would adapt to a role that seems to cry out for Mediterranean warmth. A momentary vocal drop-out on her “Amen risponda” in the Act I duet, and one or two vocal high entries that weren’t so much subtly placed as bluntly launched seemed to be indicative of possible trouble ahead. But in fact she improved act-on-act, magnificently dominating the colossal ensemble at the end of Act III (though I do wish conductors would take note of Verdi’s quite deliberate and deeply considered revision of this problematic passage – too long and complex as he came to realise – as he definitively rewrote it for Paris in 1894). And in Act IV, notwithstanding a tempo just a fraction too unyieldingly urgent to allow for much by way of expansive phrasing, Schwanewilms’s Willow Song was not only technically immaculate, seconded by Christine Pendrill’s sentient cor anglais, but somehow, in its needle-pointed glittering perfection of incorporeal, silvery timbre, managed to evoke a kind of timeless melancholy that penetrated to the essence of the music’s meaning. The “Ave Maria” was so purely sung – as pure indeed as the striking “candida veste” she was wearing – that time itself stood still, as if reluctant to allow this woman to go to her death. This is not just great singing: it is artistry of an altogether different order, capable of adumbrating whole worlds of feeling and meaning beyond the merely mechanical traversal of the score. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone achieve it since Caballé’s glory days, and didn’t really expect to again. It is a privilege, and an experience which, once encountered, is never to be forgotten, trust me.

Scarcely any less revelatory was Gerald Finley’s remarkable Iago, again un-Italian in timbre with his smooth, fine-grained, even-textured precisely-focussed lean baritone and yet so comprehensively integrated between the registers that, for the first time I can ever remember, “Era la notte” was sung without recourse to falsetto crooning in the passages describing Cassio’s “dream”. Yet where sheer vocal heft was needed, as in the “Credo”, or the Act II conclusion, it was amply forthcoming. This was an unusual Iago, more a creature of insidious intelligence than motiveless malevolence. With his inscrutable features, and lieder-singer’s attention to words and mood-painting, I should think Finley would make for a formidable Iago on stage, and hope to see him there sooner rather than later. On this showing, he has more to offer in this repertory than the comparably improbable Keenlyside, himself already knee-deep in Verdi and for whom Iago is also doubtless just a matter of time.

Allan Clayton I last saw at Glyndebourne as a gloriously un-nerdy Albert Herring, and thought then that his was a voice to watch out for. Here, as Cassio, he made a real impression at the furthest remove from the usual reedy comprimario you get to hear in the role (though I exempt Vittorio Grigolo) and sounded as though his well-schooled, evenly-produced voice – in the Toby Spence mould – is still in the business of filling out. He even had a good stab at sounding drunk in the Act I sequence (Albert’s similar lapse from grace having provided a useful template, I suppose). I wonder how, and in what direction, his voice will develop: let’s hope we get to hear more of him both while and when it does.

The various smaller roles were all taken with real distinction, Emilia somewhat excepted, with a strappingly sonorous Lodovico from the Ukrainian Alexander Tsymbalyuk, bearing a most striking resemblance to Erwin Schrott that will hardly hurt his career prospects. And Ben Johnson – rare or otherwise – made much of what little of Roderigo is left after Boito’s ruthless boiling-down of one of Shakespeare’s longest plays (though the real victim of the reduction is the stealthy, subtle seduction at the heart of the Othello/Iago relationship, and the virtual loss of Emilia). Matthew Rose made much of Montano’s pronouncements in the outer acts, and even the Act III Herald, in the towering shape of Lukas Jakobski, was impressive (he’s currently on the ROH’s Jette Parker programme and clearly yet another one to look out for, though at about 6’7’’ you won’t have to look too hard).

Over it all presided Sir Colin, now, at 82, more evidently in absolute control of such a gigantic, protean score as this than ever before, shaping the emotional arc with unerring exactitude, unleashing truly terrifying levels of dynamic violence where needed, and infusing the whole opera with unmistakeable theatrical power and emotional intensity. Given how he used to conduct Verdi, I don’t know how this has happened, but I’m very, very happy that it has. His own orchestra – hard to think of the LSO as being anybody’s else’s, Gergiev notwithstanding – responded like souls possessed, and played even out of their normal, elevated mode of execution, verging on the demented (a term of high critical approval in these quarters). And the 130-strong chorus just about tested the Barbican’s shallow-bore, low head-room acoustic to near-destruction. I think the Hall’s ushers are still scraping people’s belongings, and quite possibly some actual people, off the various back walls….

Nits to pick? Well, some of the offstage trumpeting went haywire in Act III: there was a bit if a scramble amongst the gentlemen of the LSO chorus in the rhythmically trickier inner verses of the serenade to Desdemona in Act II (which Davis cut out ten years ago, though he’s no keener now than then on having the specified children sing their parts: sopranos still do duty in the children’s odd, ongoing absence). More seriously, the organ pedal–note that should underpin the entire opening storm scene right up to the chorus’s “Si calma la bufera” was once again notable by its complete sonic absence (Why? It is prescribed in the score; though it was nice to see the extraordinary chromatic bass trombone at work, not so much an actual instrument as an art installation). And there remains Sir Colin’s aversion to anything likely to sully the purity of a concert performance, including necessary sound-effects such as the tocsin alarm as the fight gets out of hand in Act I, the clash of swords, Emilia’s knocking in Act IV (“Aprite!, aprite!…. Chi batte?”) and either Otello or Desdemona sounding anything so vulgar as a death rattle. In this puritanical spirit, no attempt is made at any meaningful kind of semi-staging, and even individual “acting out” is clearly not much on the agenda – much less any kind of interaction – though Finley’s furrow-browed stone-face and Schwanewilms’s natural stage-gestures (she crossed herself before the “Ave Maria”, as a fair few sopranos before her have probably felt like doing less out of dramatically apropos piety than simple technical necessity) were all very welcome efforts. Scarcely surprisingly, Simon O’Neill mainly concentrated on his singing, though this didn’t preclude some agonised reactions, and some strangely effective – and affecting – unconscious bouts of mouthing other people’s lines at moments of highest drama, which actually lent a persuasive air of distraction to his assumption (albeit, I’m sure, unintentional).

There is a question mark hanging over Sunday’s repeat performance – which I would advise all and sundry to attend were it not for the fact it’s sold out – in that Torsten Kerl is still here, hoping to recover, and, if he does, sing. This will presumably decide who gets the subsequent LSO Live CD release (as it is, they now have one of each tenor singing Otello, Kerl at the Dress, O’Neill at the Prima, not exactly ideal for patching and editing purposes, I’d have thought). Interested as I would – or will – be to hear Kerl in the role, I’m mindful of the problems he had with this summer’s Tristans at Glyndebourne (he was quite painful the night I heard him, and plainly in trouble, and eventually replaced by Ian Storey). A second bite of the cherry for the in-all-senses heroic O’Neill would seem an only too fitting reward. But even if he doesn’t get to sing, he can console himself, secure in the knowledge that he is the classiest cover in the whole history of opera, and that already, on the strength of what was for him a general run-through, he is an Otello in a thousand.

Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 5 December 2009

4 out of 5 Stars

In Colin Davis’s long career in the opera house, Verdi has never figured prominently among his specialities. With the London Symphony, though, he seems to filling that gap. There have been live recordings of Falstaff and the Requiem appearing on the orchestra’s CD label, and, seemingly working backwards through the chronology, Davis has turned his attention to Otello. These two Barbican performances will also form the basis of an LSO Live release.

Things did not go as planned, however. Torsten Kerl, who was to sing Otello, withdrew with a throat infection, and the New Zealand-born Simon O’Neill was drafted in as a replacement. It was apparently his first attempt at what is one of the most cruelly demanding roles in the tenor repertoire, though you would never have guessed it. O’Neill sang tirelessly, with wonderful freedom and sustained intensity, even if purists might regard his sound as not an authentically Verdian one.

Alongside him, Gerald Finley’s Jago was horribly plausible too, honey-toned yet unsettlingly amoral in the second-act credo, while beauty of tone was also the hallmark of Allan Clayton’s Cassio. All of them projected the text with great clarity, in marked contrast to Anne Schwanewilms as Desdemona, whose elegant, gilded singing was virtually wordless, and sometimes seemed disengaged. What any of the performances lacked in dramatic presence, though, was more than compensated by Davis’s conducting, which seemed to revel in the sombre colours of the score, and brought a blazing fierceness to its climaxes, whose theatricality was vividly reinforced by the contribution of the London Symphony Chorus.

Alexander Campbell, Classicalsource.com, 5 December 2009

Just before this performance of Verdi’s “Otello”, Sir Nicholas Kenyon (Managing Director of the Barbican Centre) announced that Sir Colin Davis had been awarded the 2009 Queen’s Medal for Music. The honour was given particularly in recognition of his decades at the centre of British musical life, and for his championing of young performers and artists. How true, and this momentarily reminded me that one of my earliest operatic experiences was a 1983 “Otello” at The Royal Opera House under Sir Colin, then its music director, with a cast including Charles Craig (replacing Plácido Domingo at very short notice), Piero Cappuccilli and Katia Ricciarelli.

Just as I recalled how exciting I found that evening, Colin Davis (now 82) stepped onto the podium, more or less ignoring the ovation that Sir Nicholas’s speech had engendered, and launched the London Symphony Orchestra into that opening storm. What followed was an ideally urgent and dramatic account of “Otello”, and with the orchestra not restrained by a pit, one was aware of details that had hitherto gone unnoticed. The LSO musicians were on intense form and the dynamic range Davis elicited from them was huge. Many moments stand out, particularly from Act Four. Christine Pendrill gave us some haunting cor anglais-playing of the highest order – that dark G sharp minor passage eerily presaging the horrors to come. Also memorable was the fabulous playing by the double basses when Otello approaches the sleeping Desdemona. The quiet ending of the duet of the first act was also deftly managed, as the silence that followed it attested. Indeed it was the two outer acts of the performance that were the best overall. The slightly overlong interval meant it took a little while for tension to be recreated for the early part of Act Three.

There were some excellent vocal performances. In the title-role was Simon O’Neill who had taken over from an indisposed Torsten Kerl late in the day. O’Neill certainly has the heroic and metallic tone the part needs. His top notes certainly ring! However, the character of Otello is also introverted and O’Neill was very affecting in those monologues as the Moor’s world crashes about him, and one became aware at this performance how they all start on a monotone. O’Neill can also float quiet high notes, and that made the conclusion of the Act One love-duet very memorable. If a dimension was lacking it was in capturing Otello’s dangerously mercurial changes of mood.

The casting of Iago was both surprising and successful. Gerald Finley has not undertaken many Verdi roles, and one might have thought his voice is too light and perhaps too genial for one of Verdi’s best villains. This Iago was very subtle and the pleasantness of Finley’s tone and the feigned ordinariness of demeanour when in public made the duplicity of the character even more chilling – and Finley certainly knows how to play on the words. If in the character’s more extrovert and explosive outbursts he just about had the thrust to cut through the orchestral onslaught, Finley knows about the effectiveness of body-language and movement – his slow entrances and exits really helped the portrayal.

Anne Schwanenwilms was also unexpected casting as Desdemona – we know her from her outstanding interpretations of Germanic repertoire. Truth be told her voice lacks the open-throated creamy quality and indeed an authentic Verdian line to be completely successful in the part. A less sparing use of portamento would help. Her diction was not quite as good as one might have expected. However, she does know how to float high pianissimos and has the power needed for the Act Three finale. Dramatically she was extremely convincing, and her Act Four ‘Willow Song’ and ‘Ave Maria’ scene was profound.

In the smaller roles Allan Clayton was an effective Cassio, good vocally at being the inebriate, and Ben Johnson was a presence as the ineffective Rodrigo. Matthew Rose made about as much as is possible of the role of Montano. Eufemia Tufano was a slightly nondescript Emilia, who could have done with just a little more presence. She was not helped by the surtitles during the Act Two quartet – as for the first part of it they concentrated entirely on the exchange between Otello and Desdemona rather than the Iago-Emilia exchange when she yields Desdemona’s handkerchief to him. The London Symphony Chorus was on sterling form, though at one point in the ‘Garden Scene’ of Act Two the ensemble sounded a little shaky. It was a shame there was no boys’ choir for that scene – you need their distinct sound in the texture.

The whole performance was exhilarating. Long may Sir Colin Davis remain at the centre of our musical life!

Richard Morrison, The Times, 7 December 2009 [extract – Othello at the Argyle, Birmingham was also reviewed]

4 out of 5 stars

Two nights, one disturbing theme. These Verdi productions were world-class accounts of Shakepeare’s critique on identity

It is amazing how two interpretations of the same opera can seem to come from different universes. At the Barbican, Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra gave a concert performance of Verdi’s opera that had finesse, fervour and glorious lyricism from a starry cast. But with everybody static and singing from scores, the only theatre involved was in the imagination.

…

But some would argue that Verdi’s magnificent score contains such vivid pictures in music that a first-class concert performance can transport us to the heart of Shakespeare’s darkness. This one had that capacity. Such is Davis’s rapport with the LSO and its rampant Chorus that he can unleash greater musical power with an elegant flick of the baton than most conductors muster with flailing arms. The only slight regret was Anne Schwanewilms, who sounded too matronly for Desdemona, though her Willow Song was exquisite.

Gerald Finley was superb as Iago: insidiously sinister, yet sustaining a wonderfully suave line. A host of rising singers — Allan Clayton, Matthew Rose and Ben Johnson among them — took minor parts with distinction. And the New Zealand tenor Simon O’Neill, stepping in at 24 hours’ notice to tackle the title role for the first time in his life, gave an immense performance. If he can cultivate more tonal lustre to go with his typhoon-force top notes, he will make the Moor his own.

Andrew Clark, Financial Times, 6 December 2009

4 out of 5 stars

This was one of the London Symphony Orchestra’s most glorious collaborations with Sir Colin Davis since – well, since they began doing operas in concert more than a decade ago. Their Otello was not perfect: the sopranos lost their way in the Act Two Serenade and it took Anne Schwanewilms’ Desdemona until Act Three to warm up. Even then, in the angelic line of her Ave Maria, it was impossible to understand a word she was singing. But these were minor blemishes on a performance that crackled from the start. Sir Colin was not considered a Verdian during his 15 years at Covent Garden, but Otello always stood apart. He invests it with the Elizabethan qualities of tenderness and sensuality. It, in turn, draws the visceral out of him. At 82 he still has incredible energy, propelling the ensembles with a dynamism you expect of someone half his age and generally setting a furious tempo.

The LSO was up for it. This sort of high-voltage response defines an orchestra’s personality – in the LSO’s case, an all-embracing focus and discipline, a breadth of colouring and, above all, a willingness to reach beyond the comfort zone, achieving the same finesse in Verdi’s closing wreaths of sound as it had in the bristling storm. If that spoke of majesty, so too did the fresh-voiced London Symphony Chorus, whose contributions raised the goose bumps if not the roof.

The evening’s most welcome surprise was the last-minute substitution of Simon O’Neill as Otello in place of an indisposed Torsten Kerl. With minimal rehearsal O’Neill took command: it is basically a tightly focused tenor with a heroic upper extension, which he controls with clean confidence and natural musicality. He may not be a Moor in the burnished Domingo mould, but his steely core is impressive and he fines it down where necessary.

The most Italianate singing – and by far the best diction – came from Gerald Finley, not a singer hitherto known as a Verdi baritone. His Iago prompts a full reassessment: it had colour, character, credibility. Among a fine group of comprimarios, Allan Clayton’s Cassio showed most promise.

5 out of 5 stars

Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph, 9 December 2009 [Extract]

After witnessing some mediocre performances elsewhere, I worried that the magic of Verdi’s Otello was waning for me. But the moment Colin Davis launched into the crashing storm that opens the opera, I was on the edge of my seat. This was an electrifying account of a masterpiece, conducted at the Barbican Hall with an explosive energy that belies Sir Colin’s eighty years and pushed the London Symphony Orchestra – a few lapses in ensemble aside – to the top of its game.

Simon O’Neill made a tremendous debut in the title-role, giving notice that he is the best heroic tenor to emerge over the last decade.

Another debutant, Gerald Finley was an arrestingly crisp and snakily plausible Iago. With Anne Schwanewilms a lovely if unidiomatic Desdemona, Allan Clayton a vivid Cassio, the LSO chorus singing their heart out, and the smaller roles strongly cast, Verdi’s great music drama shone in all its power and glory.

Michael Kennedy, Opera, February 2010

December 6: Colin Davis conducted an electrifying concert performance in which all the drama of a stage performance was inherent in the colours and contrasts of Verdi’s great score. The storm he unleashed at the start needed no flashes of man-made lightning to convince us of the struggle Otello’s ship was having against the elements. The combined power and excitement of the playing and singing of the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus set a standard of vividness and intensity which never let up during the evening. We are asked to believe that Sir Colin is an octogenarian, but on this evidence it takes some believing.

The title role was to have been sung by Torsten Kerl, but he was ill and was replaced by the New-Zealander Simon O’Neill. He gave an impressive display of heroic singing, with the essential ringing tone. He lacks the baritonal quality of the finest Otellos, but the beauty of his phrasing and the lyric introspection he brought to his soliloquies were marked by intelligent artistry. He is undoubtedly a new star in the tenor firmament, as long as he doesn’t take on too much. In a cast containing only one Italian, it was no surprise to encounter a rather unidiomatic Desdemona in Anne Schwanewilms. She sang the Willow Song and Ave Maria tenderly and with more involvement than she showed in the dramas of Act 3. Hers is a lovely voice, but there are moments when one worries about the security of her technique.

The outstanding performance was that of Gerald Finley as Iago. Any thoughts that he might not have the capacity for evil in his vocal range were soon dispelled as he revealed a most subtle and insinuating portrait of calculated villainy, sung with a velvety and suave tone that chilled the blood. The Credo was magnificent. Allan Clayton was a pleasing Cassio, Matthew Rose an imposing Montano.