Word: otello
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...Verdi: Otello (Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus, Wilfred Pelletier conducting, with Lawrence Tibbett. Giovanni Martinelli, Helen Jepson and other artists; Victor: 12 sides). A much abridged edition of Verdi's great Shakespearean opera, so well recorded that you can almost hear the dust blowing off Tenor Martinelli's aging vocal chords...
...robust, white-mopped tenor who made his debut at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera the year before the War. Never the undisputed best of the Metropolitan's chandelier-jigglers, Martinelli has been a dependable artist in an enormous repertory (57 roles). In two operas, Verdi's Otello and Halevy's La Juive, critics found him first-rate. Although a little worn at the edges, Martinelli's voice is still serviceable. To his sunny, bouncing personality, his fellow artists paid tribute at the completion of his 25th season last year (TIME, March 28, 1938). Last week...
...Caniglia was found crawling about the Met's splintery stage in search of bent nails. Reason: An old Neapolitan superstition that bent nails mean luck. She found a half dozen, toted them about with her while she sang the part of Desdemona in the season's opener, Otello. Thus equipped, Soprano Caniglia sang lustily, was lustily choked in the last act by Tenor Giovanni Martinelli (Otello) who finally covered her face with a pillow. The performance over, she had the ecstatic satisfaction (see cut) of being smothered again by flowers in her dressing room...
...weeks from tonight the curtain will go up on the Metropolitan's premiere performance in the 1938 Boston season. And it is with a shout of joy that many of us will greet that opening opera, Verdi's "Otello." For rare indeed are the opportunities of American audiences to hear this masterpiece of the Italian composer's prime...
...composer should be sung to the exclusion of other writers whose works are of equal merit. Last year, with the entire "Ring" cycle and several individual Wagnerian operas all crowded into ten days, there was a complete lack of balance in the musical fare. That is why Verdi's "Otello," Mozart's "Don Giovanni," and Richard Strauss's "Der Rosenkavalier" are such welcome additions to the 1938 Boston list...