Otello comes to Den Norske Opera this month. Performances will run 16 January – 8 February. What do jealousy and bitterness do to a person? What happens inside you when someone takes all-out advantage of your vulnerability? The dark side of humanity is exposed in director Georg Zlabinger’s interpretation of Verdi’s Otello.
He has made a name for himself, earned victory on battlefields and married the beautiful Desdemona. On the outside, Otello is clearly a winner. But in his own ranks, there is someone who turns victory into loss by pitting Otello against himself.
“I believe in a cruel God who created me in His image.” This is the creed of Jago, one of the performing arts’ most devious manipulators. He is passed over for the position of Otello’s second-in-command in favour of the noble Cassio. As punishment, Jago wants to inflict the same pain on Otello as he has endured.
Experience Daniel Johansson as Otello, Marita Sølberg as Desdemona and Yngve Søberg as the morally corrupt Jago.
Otello’s museum
With his Moorish background, Otello is never able to escape the feeling of being different. The facade that he puts up becomes a museum on stage in Bjørvika.
The audience is invited to question how we relate to inherited art, the extent to which the monuments of the past are built on a foundation of stone or sand.
Verdi’s final tragic masterpiece
Otello was a huge success after its premiere performance in Milan in 1887. The opera differed from Verdi’s earlier work in that the music was written as virtually a single, coherent score, one was also built on the legacy of traditional Italian opera.
Otello became Verdi’s very last tragic masterpiece and the text by Arrigo Boito is based on William Shakespeare’s play of the same name from the early 1600s. It continues to be one of the most beautiful pieces ever written for the opera stage.
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