He came, he sang, he conquered. Sceptics might have argued
that none of these things were foregone conclusions: Jonas
Kaufmann’s debut as Verdi’s ‘lion of Venice’ at Covent Garden
last summer was one of the most eagerly anticipated operatic
performances in years, but how he would fare in one of the most
taxing roles in the repertoire after a period of vocal
ill-health was the subject of much pre-match speculation.
In the event, he was little short of magnificent. Kaufmann
has come to redefine pretty much every role he touches, and this
is no exception: his Otello is no elder statesman in the
tradition of Vickers or Domingo, but a youthful firebrand who’s
ascended the military hierarchy at lightning speed and still
can’t quite believe he’s got there. In the early stages, the
dormant psychological damage which renders him so vulnerable to
Iago’s machinations is hinted at only obliquely: there’s none of
the explicit manifestations of PTSD which we saw in his
Lohengrin for Richard Jones, but rather a nervous energy that
only dissipates in the arms of Maria Agresta’s maternal
Desdemona (their Act One love-duet brings some of his finest
singing of the evening as those trademark pianissimo high notes
shimmer in the Cypriot night air).
I was lucky enough to
attend one of the live performances, but I appreciated both
Keith Warner’s production and the subtleties of its central
performance even more on-screen, not least because of the
sensitive, illuminating camerawork masterminded by
video-director Jonathan Haswell. Kaufmann thrives under the
scrutiny of the camera, and for the first minute of the great
monologue ‘Dio, me potevi’ it’s trained unflinchingly on his
face, catching every flicker between self-pity, anger and numb
disbelief; vocally, too, some of the fine-grained detail which
got slightly lost in the opera-house really makes its mark here.
His first appearance, though, is a straight-up coup de theatre:
seconds before the famous ‘Esultate!’ rings out, the conquering
hero rises up through the expectant crowd on a pedestal and
Bruno Poet’s lighting (an unsung star of the production) hits
Kaufmann’s famously striking features like a scene from
Caravaggio.
He has a formidable antagonist in the Italian
baritone Marco Vratogna, who replaced Ludovic Tézier as Iago
just three weeks before opening night. Shaven-headed, muscular
and bullish, this malign ensign is a cards-on-the-table thug
whose overt shadiness works as an elaborate double-bluff: rather
than the oleaginous duplicity of a James Morris or a Leo Nucci,
Vratogna’s apparent honesty is dressed up as a dysfunctional
bluntness that borders on the psychopathic. His sadistic
tendencies are firmly established from the outset, as he
desecrates the severed head of an ‘orgoglio musolmano’ to the
disgust of the massed onlookers (shades of Tolomeo in Handel’s
Giulio Cesare here). Small wonder that this Iago didn’t get his
promotion.
Maria Agresta’s radiant Desdemona is no
ingénue but a mature and assured First Lady who seems to be
attuned to the volatility of the man she married but fatally
overestimates her ability to diffuse it. Her impassioned but
flawlessly-sung Ave Maria is an agonised dark night of the soul
rather than an oasis of calm before the storm, and all the more
affecting for that. Among the smaller roles, Frédéric Antoun
brings Errol Flynn-ish glamour and elegance of line to Cassio -
one easily understands how even this particular Otello could
regard him as a credible love-rival.
Keith Warner’s
straightforward and relatively minimalist production (loosely
Renaissance costuming shot through with a distinct modern
accent, especially in the shattering final act) plays up the
work’s claustrophobia and its preoccupation with contrasts
between light and darkness; Moorish lattice-screens cast
fragmented shadows over much of the action, particularly as
Otello’s perception of reality begins to shatter in the middle
two acts, and shifting scenery is used to great effect as first
Cassio and later Otello are literally destabilised by Iago’s
puppet-mastery.
Recording
of the week
