Word: otello
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...Opera's current season Der Rosenkavalier and Roméo et Juliette have been billed as "revivals."' Yet neither had been absent more than three years from the repertory; Rosenkavalier had not even been newly staged. Last week a genuine revival finally did appear. Verdi's Otello, one of his last and greatest works, had not been seen & heard at the Opera House since the days when Toscanini conducted and principal roles were taken by dashing Leo Slezak, gossipy Frances Alda and drama-wise Antonio Scotti...
Last week's blackface Otello, veteran Giovanni Martinelli, could have won his audience without the smash-clapping and howling of the inevitable claque. Elisabeth Rethberg (Desdemona) substituted massively for Eide Norena, who was ill. Long-legged, snub-nosed Lawrence Tibbett (lago) acted so enthusiastically he almost made a home-plate slide in the second...
Aside from a surefire Ring, and sterling individual performances, critics found little to commend. They considered Otello "dull," "flat," "not up to the usual standard of Covent Garden." In the Sunday Times Ernest Newman pronounced Don Pasquale "an exasperation and a pain from first to last." When critics on the Evening News, the Manchester Guardian, the Star and the News Chronicle came out with adverse criticism of Cesare Formichi's singing in Falstaff, Covent Garden stopped sending them tickets. Even the Times was moved to protest the "disarrangement" of Orphée and Prince Igor, in which the Ballet...
...themselves going through the Opera House's swingdoors. Tier upon tier of the gold & scarlet boxes* were full of distinguished Britons and foreigners as distinguished. Peppery old Sir Thomas Beecham waved his baton. The curtain rose on a storm-tossed ship, the first scene in Verdi's Otello. Tenor Giovanni Martinelli of the Metropolitan sang his first role at Covent Garden since 1914. The Coronation season of grand opera began...
When Scotti announced his retirement from the Metropolitan Opera Company three years ago, Manhattan newspapers devoted columns to his proud career, his intelligent use of a voice that was never booming, his subtle impersonations of such villains as Iago in Otello, Chim-Fen in L'Oracolo, Scarpia in Tosca (TIME, Jan. 30, 1933). When he sang his farewell performance a great audience cheered, wept, sang For He's a Jolly Good Fellow. When he died in Naples last week there were only four mourners to follow him to his grave...