Review: Yoncheva as Desdemona Shines in New Verdi OTELLO at the Met

When Verdi and Boito were writing their operatic version of Shakespeare's OTHELLO, they were competing with the already-successful (though less faithful) version written by Rossini and thought about calling their opera IAGO. After seeing Bartlett Sher's new production of the Verdi OTELLO, I wondered whether it might have been renamed DESDEMONA--because soprano Sonya Yoncheva gave the opera's most devastating and gorgeous performance.

Bulgarian Yoncheva showed her considerable chops from her first performances at the Met last year, as Mimi in the classic Zeffirelli production of LA BOHEME and Violetta in the stark Willy Decker LA TRAVIATA, showing her ability to reach into the truth of the characters, no matter what the production style. The Met's new OTELLO falls somewhere in between, with Catherine Zuber's glamorous costumes that flattered the beautiful soprano and the proverbial "glass house" of the set, by Es Devlin and lighting by Donald Holder, where there are no secrets and no place to hide. The torrential seas, created by the projections of Lukas Hall, are frightening, as the backdrop for the Met's great chorus and the orchestra under conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin's sensitive direction. This is a Cyprus without sunlight, fitting for a story without any mercy for its characters.

The soprano consequently takes an understandably straightforward approach to her role: She has to work with a character (Des-DE-mona, here) who is the quintessential victim and is a little tough to take with any kind of modern sensibility. She nonetheless is able to pull it off by putting the emphasis on trust and love, believing that her husband could not possibly have been transformed by jealousy into the monster the audience sees. Her acting is convincing and natural, and her singing could not be bettered, with outstanding renditions of "Salce, salce," Desdemona's Willow Song, and the "Ave Maria" that lead up to her death. She even manages to make to opera's great love duet, "Gia nella notte densa...", work--without having the right partner to play off.

The production's Otello, Latvian Aleksandrs Antonenko, is the current tenor of choice for the role and his burly presence certainly cut through the crowd, visibly and vocally, with his entrance, "Exultate!" But his voice was cumbersome for most of the first half of the opera (Acts I and II are combined without intermission) and his stage presence tended toward "angry" rather than "jealous"--which doesn't work in the context of the piece. Otello is no subtle character-neither in Shakespeare nor Verdi--but Antonenko, and director Sher, have made no attempt to make him more three-dimensional. As for the much-discussed fact that this is the first Met OTELLO done without blackface makeup, well, it is about time, and I certainly don't think it would have made a difference in the effectiveness of Antonenko's portrayal.

The third leg of the opera's ménage a trois, Iago, was Serbian baritone Zeljko Lucic. Whenever I hear OTELLO, I think of the line from HAMLET, "one may smile, and smile, and be a villain," because it certainly fits Iago, who sets the tragedy in motion because of his own greed and jealousy. When Lucic sings, "Credo in un dio crudel" ("I believe in a cruel God"), it makes the hairs on the back of your head stand up, but the character doesn't change much from the onset--when he should, perhaps, become as crazy from his own evil as he makes Otello.

The other principals in smaller parts fit the bill well. Tenor Dmitri Pittas as Cassio, the other object of Otello's jealousy, made a strong impression and mezzo Jennifer Johnson Cano as Emilia, wife of Iago and attendant to Desdemona, proved a fitting counterpoint for her evil husband.

Sher has proven to be one of the Met's better cross-over directors from the theatre to opera. This time around, the results are uneven--Otello's entrance in Act I certainly doesn't work nearly as well as Zeffirelli's take on it, and the tenor and baritone could have used a stronger arm--but it's good to have a director around who brings some new ideas and fresh air (not to mention a respect for the art form) into the opera house.

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