Otello, ENO

Acclaimed director David Alden marks the end of his 30th year at ENO with Giuseppe Verdi’s tragic Otello. 

Known for his politically charged productions, Alden’s exposes the elemental conflicts at the heart of opera, psychologizing his characters and approaching well-trodden narratives with imagination. His 2009 production of Peter Grimes, revived at the ENO earlier this year, was a brutal masterstroke: laying bare the rotten heart of war-torn England that Britten sought to condemn. His Otello is similarly triumphant.

Otello was Verdi’s penultimate opera – in fact, he had to be cajoled by his publisher out of his early retirement to write it. Based on Shakespeare's tragedy, the story is thick with jealousy, love and revenge with orchestral writing to match. ENO's musical director Edward Gardner handles the turbulent score with magnificently, right from the opening storm scene with its scurrying melodies and claps of thunder from the brass and percussion. You’d expect nothing less from this Romantic Italian composer, of course.


Alden sets the work at the heart of a battle-torn, nineteenth-century Cyprus, with the action taking place in a simple but distinctly Mediterranean church courtyard. Iago is desperately embittered when newly-elected governor Otello chooses not to appoint him as captain of the navy, and makes it his mission to secure the man’s downfall by targeting his Achilles heel: Otello’s loyal, though slightly naïve wife, Desdemona. 
Critics have unanimously hailed the vocal performance of tenor Stuart Skelton –an Alden favourite, he was the director's Peter Grimes-  in the titular role. although questioned the director’s decision to present him as a misled everyman rather than emulate the dramatic emotional destruction of Verdi's original hero. 

American soprano Leah Crocetto shapes Desdemona’s phrases (listen out for her poignant Ave Maria aria as she resigns herself to her fate), but it’s baritone Jonathan Summers who allegedly steals the show with his riveting appearance as the bitter malcontent Iago.