Othello

Many would regard Verdi’s late masterpiece, Otello, as the most successful operatic adaptation of Shakespeare. Some have also even opined that it is better than the play. There is no doubting that it is a remarkable work and a towering landmark in nineteenth-century opera. It was a remarkable alignment of fate for this reviewer to able to see the Verdi work a day before a third viewing of perhaps the most successful Shakespeare adaptation of the twenty-first century, Brett Dean’s Hamlet.

Whatever else Peter Evans's production of Othello has going for it, and it has indeed much, the speaking of Shakespeare's verse is outstanding. It is never declamatory, in the way that some famous actors of earlier decades dealt with it. The verse emerges entirely intact, but is always made to ...