Otello
Director: Peter Schönhofer
Distributor: C Major Entertainment
Length: approx. 150 min.
16:9 shot in 1080i HD | stereo & 5.1 surround sound
© 2008, a BFMI production for Unitel & ZDF/3sat
From the 2008 Salzburg Fest­iv­al
Dramma lirico in four acts by Gi­useppe Verdi
Text by Ar­rigo Boito based on the tragedy Oth­ello, the Moor of Venice by Wil­li­am Shakespeare

"Otello is an in­tim­ate drama – a clear-eyed ex­am­in­a­tion of the most de­struct­ive and neg­at­ive of hu­man emo­tions: jeal­ousy and envy. But these emo­tions can only ex­ist in re­la­tion to so­ci­ety. The power of Venice was foun­ded en­tirely on com­merce and caste. To en­sure that wealth re­mained con­cen­trated in the noble fam­il­ies rather than dis­sip­at­ing down the gen­er­a­tions, it was nor­mal for only one son and one daugh­ter in each fam­ily to marry. Oth­ers be­came busi­ness men or politi­cians, nuns or maid­en aunts. With so many un­mar­ried nobles abroad it is easy to ima­gine why Venice had an in­ter­na­tion­al repu­ta­tion for sexu­al per­missive­ness. The three main prot­ag­on­ists of the tragedy are all ex­cluded from the centre of this so­ci­ety: Otello is for­eign, seen as black, marked out by his cul­tur­al, lin­guist­ic, re­li­gious, and re­gion­al ori­gins; Jago is not a no­ble­man; Des­de­mona has be­trayed her noble fam­ily, and cut her­self off, by mar­ry­ing against her fath­er's wishes. Cassio, by con­trast, is firmly part of the es­tab­lish­ment. Such a so­ci­ety is a fer­tile breed­ing-ground for the per­ni­cious vir­us of jeal­ousy – es­pe­cially when the sub­ject is a man who is an out­sider, and for whom the in­ner work­ings of Vene­tian so­ci­ety re­main a mys­tery, a vor­tex of nods and winks, while its mor­al­ity is all too ap­par­ent." - Steph­en Lan­gridge

Aleksandrs Ant­onen­ko, Otello
Mar­ina Pop­lavskaya, Des­de­mona
Car­los Álvarez, Jago
Bar­ba Di Castri, Emil­ia
Steph­en Cos­tello, Cassio
Ant­on­ello Cer­on, Ro­derigo
Mikhail Pet­renko, Lodovico
Si­mone Del Sa­vio, Montano
An­drea Poarta, A Her­ald

Ric­cardo Muti, con­duct­or
Steph­en Lan­gridge, stage dir­ect­or
Wien­er Phil­har­monik­er
Konzer­tver­ein­i­gung Wien­er Staat­so­per­n­chor
Salzbur­ger Fest­spiele Kinder­chor
Otello - Riccardo Muti, DVD
buy now DVD
buy now BLU-RAY

© 2024 Bernhard Fleischer Moving Images GmbH



Imprint
Back to top