Whatever the colour, Otello will survive
Verdi opera transcends debate over tenor’s skin colour and makeup
Verdi’s Otello is on the big screen Saturday afternoon as a Metropolitan Opera Live in HD broadcast, with Yannick Nézet- Séguin famously in the pit and Aleksandrs Antonenko even more famously playing the title role without the benefit ( or hindrance) of black makeup.
Not six months ago, while a blackface controversy was seething in Montreal theatrical circles, it was confidently predicted in this column that Verdi’s penultimate ( and greatest) opera would continue to be staged as it always had been, with the lead tenor made up to look like the black man he is assumed to be. The Gazette regrets the error. Not only is the Met, by decree of the company’s general manager Peter Gelb, doing without traditional makeup, the Opéra de Montréal has decided that Kristian Benedikt will likewise take the stage of Salle Wilfrid Pelletier in January ( surely with no objection from the guest conductor, Keri-Lynn Wilson, who is Gelb’s wife).
As for Benedikt, this Lithuanian tenor is doing Otello au naturel this week at the Pacific Opera Victoria in British Columbia. The Hungarian State Opera has just concluded a run of a new production in which neither Lance Ryan ( a white Canadian) nor tenor Rafael Rojas ( a Mexican) wore black makeup. No black makeup, for Otello, in a matter of months, has become the new normal.
The revolution comes, paradoxically, at a time when scholars of the humanities could hardly be more obsessed with race as a component of the works they profess to illuminate. The Arden Shakespeare, an edition known for thorough annotation, promises to re- release its Othello next year with a new essay by Ayanna Thompson, an American English professor whose 2013 book Pass--
ing Strange has made her the go- to authority on race in Shakespeare.
As I pointed out in my ill- starred essay in March, voice type has traditionally trumped skin colour ( among other visual considerations, such as weight) in opera. I should like to think it still does. Hiromi Omura will be playing Desdemona in the OdM production of Otello, for the good reason that she has enjoyed success in Montreal before.
It needs to be acknowledged, however, that the signature role of this Japanese soprano is Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
There are obviously many cases of non- whites playing whites in opera ( and theatre), and of whites playing characters of various ethnicities, generally without creating a fuss. Otello is a special case because of the association of dark makeup with blackface, an overtly abusive and stereotypical form of musical comedy that has been extinct for decades.
Should we make this equation? In my view it is entirely specious. But now it is out there, and any company that tries to remain above the fray risks condemnation for racial insensitivity.
One might argue that the inevitable loser in this debate is the opera itself. But there are some reasons for opera fans not to worry. One is this seldom- recognized reality: Verdi’s Otello is less “black” than his prototype in Shakespeare.
Make no mistake: Arrigo Boito, Verdi’s librettist, followed the tragedy closely and his adaptation is rightly acclaimed. But he went easy on the racial imagery. Indeed, the first cultural reference is Otello’s victorious shout and declaration that “the Muslim pride” ( l’orgoglio musulmano) is “buried in the deep” ( a reference to the fact that the Venetians have succeeded in defeating the Turkish navy).
When the general later breaks up a bar fight, his sarcastic question to the troublemakers is: “Am I among Saracens?” Otello might be a Moor, whatever that racially imprecise designation signifies, but his identification is entirely with the Christian side of the conflict.
To be sure, there are outbursts of racist contempt in the opera, but these are assigned ( as in Shakespeare) to Iago, who recruits Roderigo into his scheme with the baseless prediction that Desdemona “will soon begin to abhor the murky kisses of that thick- lipped savage.”
If race plays a role in Iago’s hatred of Otello, this is, in a sense, all to the good. Iago, after all, is a liar and a nihilist. And when the chorus reflects in Act 3 on how “this black man has a graveyard air,” the observation seems to be entirely sympathetic.
Nor does the consensus on Otello’s nobility in Verdi’s opera appear to have any explicitly racial dimension. “Is this then the hero?” Lodovico asks when Otello threatens violence against Desdemona. “Is this the warrior of such noble daring ?”
Desdemona, for her part, makes no direct reference to the race of her husband. In the love duet she recalls his tales of “scorching sands, the country of your birth,” as well as “sufferings” related to “chains and slavery’s agony.”
What this tells us is that Otello was a victim of the Arab slave trade, which afflicted whites and blacks alike. This fact naturally predisposes him against “Saracens,” including the Turks. His peculiar and exotic history is as much an element of his “otherness” as his race.
Noteworthy in my view is the absence in the opera of Emilia’s scathing response to Othello’s admission that he has murdered Desdemona: “O, the more angel she,/ And you the blacker devil!”
In the opera Amelia ( her Italian equivalent) cools the race rhetoric, shouting merely “Stolto!” ( fool, dolt) when Otello cites Iago as the source of his belief in his wife’s unfaithfulness. “And you believed him?” she continues. “Dare you deny it?” responds Otello in a typically dynamic ( and operatic) give- and- take.
So here comes another bold prediction: Otello will survive in the opera house as a white man, black man or in any shade in between. Such is the indestructibility of Verdi’s genius.