Verdi’s penultimate opera almost did not come into being. After Aida in 1870-1872, the composer believed he was finished with the theater. It was only through the sensitive and continued pressure applied by his editor, Giulio Ricordi, and his esteem for the musician/librettist Arrigo Boito—despite their rocky relationship during the 1860s—that Verdi decided he might still have more music within him. Not that he was idle in the years following Aida. He composed the Messa da Requiem to be performed in 1874 to celebrate the anniversary of the death of the beloved writer and patriot, Alessandro Manzoni; he composed his Quartet; he traveled around Europe presenting his music in many different theaters and concert venues. But the effort of producing a new opera was something else, and Verdi had severe doubts whether a man of his age (he was almost 70 at the time) should undertake it.
Both Ricordi and Boito knew, however, that the composer particularly loved the plays of Shakespeare, and that he dreamed of returning to the stage with a work by the author who had supplied him with the subject for his Macbeth, an opera first written for Florence in 1847, then revised for Paris in 1864. Boito even prepared a draft of the Otello libretto to submit to Verdi in 1879, and Ricordi facilitated their meeting. Still, Verdi was hesitant. And so they undertook a different path. They planned to get him accustomed to the idea of working again in the theater by undertaking revisions of earlier works. The composer loved his own Simon Boccanegra of 1857, but it was considered too depressing and was no longer in circulation. And so he was asked to revise the opera so it could again hold the stage. Boito pressed him to make more changes than the composer wished to make, but in the end they agreed to do what both considered essential, including the almost entirely new finale of Act I, the so-called “Council Chamber Scene,” and in 1881 the opera again was performed, this time with great success.
It had always been difficult to have operas originally written for France circulate easily in Italy. (Rossini’s Guillaume Tell of 1829 was never fully accepted by the Italians, although they admired what the composer had done.) While Verdi was relatively indifferent to the fate of Jérusalem (since its source, I Lombardi, continued to be heard in Italy) and even of Les Vêpres Siciliennes, the 1867 Don Carlos was another matter. The idea of revising this five-act French opera (although still to a French text, that could later be “Italianized”) in a way that would make it compatible with Italian customs took hold, and so in 1884 the revised opera (in four acts, without a ballet) had its premiere at La Scala.
While these revisions were all well and good, they did not produce a new opera. For that, however, the groundwork had been laid, and Verdi’s agreement to allow Boito to move ahead with Otello, although reserving for himself the right at any point to say, no more, was fundamental. Composer and librettist worked together between 1884 and 1887 to produce the opera that had its premiere at the Teatro alla Scala on February 3, 1887. In fact, however, creative activity really began in the late 1870s, as Verdi contemplated the project and Boito pressed a draft of his libretto on the composer. There has been a great deal of documentation about the process. Most importantly, the entire correspondence between Boito and Verdi has been published, both in Italian and in a masterful English translation by William Weaver. What we do not have thus far, though, is any but a small portion of the musical work that Verdi did in this period. We know, however, from letters and from a cache of material that the Verdi family shared with Giulio Gatti-Cazzasa (and that the latter made avilable to Toscanini) that the composer was hard at work by 1885 and that there are entire sections of the opera (such as Desdemona’s “Willow Song”) that went through multiple versions before emerging as they would in 1887.
Transforming the complex world of a Shakespearean play into an Italian libretto was not a simple task. Although Verdi tried for years to obtain a workable libretto from King Lear, his librettists failed him. Boito, however, was determined to succeed with Otello. The first significant thing he did, of course, was to omit the scene in Venice (Shakespeare’s first act) altogether, while still retaining important passages from it. The act is very important in Shakespeare. In it, the seeds of Otello’s doubts about Desdemona are sown by her father, who—in his unhappiness at his daughter’s marriage—tells him, “Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see: / She has deceived her father, and may thee.” In it we also learn how the love of Desdemona and Otello grew, though a similar scene is introduced by Boito into the final duet for Desdemona and Otello in Act I of the opera. Many details from the original are omitted, such as particulars about Cassio’s dalliance with Bianca. The role of Emilia is greatly reduced. Indeed, Boito concentrates his energy almost exclusively on the relationship between Otello, Desdemona, and Iago.
One of the criticisms often made of Shakespeare’s play is the lack of a compelling motivation for Iago’s actions: there are various suggestions about his jealousy, his anger at being passed over for promotion, his character. Boito does not interfere with these various suggestions, to be sure, but he also writes a text for Iago at the beginning of Act II, a mock Credo, with an explicit negation of the Catholic prayer. In it the librettist emphasizes the nihilism of the character, concluding with the terrible lines: “Vien.... dopo tanta irrison la Morte. E poi? La Morte è il Nulla, è vecchio fola il Ciel” (And after such mockery comes Death. And then what? Death is nothingness, Heaven is an old-wives’ tale).
Verdi succeeds brilliantly in capturing one moment after another of this terrible drama. The opening storm is terrifying, and Otello’s brief entrance “Esultate! L’orgoglio musulmano sepolto è in mar” (Exult! Muslim pride is buried in the sea) rightly stands as one of the most exciting entrances in all opera. The drinking song through which Iago torments Cassio is in three strophes, with the accompaniment ever more drunken, until poor Cassio cannot restrain himself any longer and interrupts again and again as Iago sings. The duet for Otello and Desdemona is in sharp contrast to the first part of the act, and the three kisses as set to music by Verdi—music that will come again after he has murdered her—are here full of hope and love. The theme of Iago’s “Credo,” played in octaves by the full orchestra, is unforgettable, as are the trills of derision that accompany his “Credo in un Dio crudel” (I believe in a cruel God). Iago’s destructive “Temete, signor, la gelosia. È un idra fosca, livida, cieca, col suo velen sé stesso attosca” is a close translation of Shakespeare’s “O beware, my lord, of jealousy! / It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock / The meat it feeds on.” Verdi’s slithering melody captures all its insinuating horror.
And so the opera continues, with the composer following each detail with a pictorial and expressive ability that is astounding, as by this time he was in his mid-70s. The end of Act III, when Iago plants his heel on the collapsed Otello as the Moor is hailed from off-stage, is unforgettable. And Desdemona’s “Willow Song” is rightly renowned as one of the great arias in opera. There is no hesitation here. The final duet never stops in its relentless move toward the murder of Desdemona, and—of course—Otello’s final reprise of the “kiss” motive from the end of the first act follows precisely Shakespeare’s concluding “I kissed thee ere I killed thee: no way but this / Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.”
Otello is certainly one of the greatest operas ever written, and its genius lies precisely in the way Verdi meets Shakespeare, through the intermediary of Boito, and pours into the story of the Moor and his love for Desdemona all the passion and musical richness he had developed in a career of more than 45 years.
Philip Gossett, the Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor at The University of Chicago, is general editor of The Works of Guiseppe Verdi and the Edizione critica delle opere di Gioachino Rossini.
