<Translated from Danish automatically>
When Giuseppe Verdi, at the end of his "Requiem," musters all his strength to stand on the side of life against death, it is with the enhancing lyrical glow of a soprano voice. For him, the soprano was the vocal position in his opera dramas that should remain unbreakable and intact, no matter what it was subjected to.
Perhaps this is expressed most strongly in his penultimate opera, "Otello," where Desdemona’s humanly unstained music carries the entire drama on its path toward the abyss. She dies, but she never loses her dignity. She never allows herself to be destroyed internally—unlike the men around her. Otello's devastating fear of Desdemona’s falsehood, which would make heaven "mock itself," is not Verdi’s own. He never harbored that mistrust.
When Nicola Raab directed "Otello" at the Royal Danish Theatre a few years ago, she tackled Desdemona’s duality (the victim role and the invincible) by making her continuously present, almost all-seeing, during the four acts. Exposed, but also with an unusual control over the action that she maintained right up to the very last kiss.
In David Alden’s production, which premiered last Saturday at the Royal Swedish Opera, Desdemona is played by Malin Byström. A world-class soprano who in this role sounds as if she has managed to capture all conceivable light, even from places the sun has never reached. Byström’s Desdemona also has a grace in her movements that creates an icon-like aura around her. She is mistrusted, struck, and humiliated, yet she still does not want to believe it. And in the most dreadful scenes, when one expects her to be finished, she rises and flings out a prayer. As if the capacity for transcendence is everything.
It is entirely in Verdi’s spirit and devastatingly powerful.
The evening's conductor, Alexander Vedernikov, also got the Royal Court Orchestra to growl and roar in the most bestial manner without the music losing its burning sharpness. At the same time, the sensuality became clear in the waves of warmth that occasionally break forth in the score.
In Jon Morell's stripped-down stage space, inside the walls of a patinated yet timeless Cyprus, the after-effects of the initial storm prevail. Everything wavers as in a long, drawn-out echo of past wars and catastrophes. A situation where everything can begin to be interpreted in new ways. Where lies can become truths and civilization a barbarism. A state of emergency that is embodied by the destructive relationship between the opera’s three main male characters.
Here we encounter Kristian Benedikt's powerful and rough-hewn Otello against Claudio Sgura’s gentlemanly smooth Iago and Allan Clayton’s spineless Cassio in an infernal game of power, love, and jealousy which, like a maelstrom, seems able to drag an entire world with it—down to the most primitive form of human existence. A brutally physical game that Alden’s direction gives free rein to—so that it can truly exhaust itself until all boundaries are reached. And nothing else remains but the silence and perhaps the memory of “yet another kiss.”
Kristian Benedikt (Otello) Malin Byström (Desdemona) at the Royal Swedish Opera. PHOTO: Markus Gårder
Source.
When Giuseppe Verdi, at the end of his "Requiem," musters all his strength to stand on the side of life against death, it is with the enhancing lyrical glow of a soprano voice. For him, the soprano was the vocal position in his opera dramas that should remain unbreakable and intact, no matter what it was subjected to.
Perhaps this is expressed most strongly in his penultimate opera, "Otello," where Desdemona’s humanly unstained music carries the entire drama on its path toward the abyss. She dies, but she never loses her dignity. She never allows herself to be destroyed internally—unlike the men around her. Otello's devastating fear of Desdemona’s falsehood, which would make heaven "mock itself," is not Verdi’s own. He never harbored that mistrust.
When Nicola Raab directed "Otello" at the Royal Danish Theatre a few years ago, she tackled Desdemona’s duality (the victim role and the invincible) by making her continuously present, almost all-seeing, during the four acts. Exposed, but also with an unusual control over the action that she maintained right up to the very last kiss.
In David Alden’s production, which premiered last Saturday at the Royal Swedish Opera, Desdemona is played by Malin Byström. A world-class soprano who in this role sounds as if she has managed to capture all conceivable light, even from places the sun has never reached. Byström’s Desdemona also has a grace in her movements that creates an icon-like aura around her. She is mistrusted, struck, and humiliated, yet she still does not want to believe it. And in the most dreadful scenes, when one expects her to be finished, she rises and flings out a prayer. As if the capacity for transcendence is everything.
It is entirely in Verdi’s spirit and devastatingly powerful.
The evening's conductor, Alexander Vedernikov, also got the Royal Court Orchestra to growl and roar in the most bestial manner without the music losing its burning sharpness. At the same time, the sensuality became clear in the waves of warmth that occasionally break forth in the score.
In Jon Morell's stripped-down stage space, inside the walls of a patinated yet timeless Cyprus, the after-effects of the initial storm prevail. Everything wavers as in a long, drawn-out echo of past wars and catastrophes. A situation where everything can begin to be interpreted in new ways. Where lies can become truths and civilization a barbarism. A state of emergency that is embodied by the destructive relationship between the opera’s three main male characters.
Here we encounter Kristian Benedikt's powerful and rough-hewn Otello against Claudio Sgura’s gentlemanly smooth Iago and Allan Clayton’s spineless Cassio in an infernal game of power, love, and jealousy which, like a maelstrom, seems able to drag an entire world with it—down to the most primitive form of human existence. A brutally physical game that Alden’s direction gives free rein to—so that it can truly exhaust itself until all boundaries are reached. And nothing else remains but the silence and perhaps the memory of “yet another kiss.”
Kristian Benedikt (Otello) Malin Byström (Desdemona) at the Royal Swedish Opera. PHOTO: Markus Gårder
Source.
"Otello" at the Royal Swedish Opera
Martin NYSTRÖM, Dagens Nyheter, March 16, 2015
