Performing Ot(h)ello: Verdi, Salvini, and the stage manual

De Francisci, E. (2022) Performing Ot(h)ello: Verdi, Salvini, and the stage manual. Cambridge Opera Journal, 34(3), pp. 293-308. (doi: 10.1017/S0954586722000258)

Abstract

This article retraces Giuseppe Verdi's Otello (1887) to the great Italian mattatori (star actors), particularly Tommaso Salvini (1829–1915), whose ground-breaking performances of the Moor of Venice, in a translation by Giulio Carcano, coincided with the time when Verdi and his librettist, Arrigo Boito, were collaborating on their Otello. The grandi attori enjoyed a reputation for realistic immediacy and impulsiveness readily associated with cultural stereotypes about Italy's perceived ‘otherness’. In the ethnographic context of nineteenth-century Italy, it is argued here that the actors’ interpretation of Shakespeare's Moor not only synthesised the multilateral cultural threads of the Jacobean Othello, but also partnered this racial alterity with a new dramatic language, which went on to influence Verdi's opera and prompt book, and, ultimately, to perpetuate an exoticised ‘brand’ of Italian artistic culture on stage at a time when Italy was fashioning its own national identity.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: De Francisci, Dr Enza
• Authors: De Francisci, E.
• College/School: College of Arts > School of Modern Languages and Cultures
• Journal Name: Cambridge Opera Journal
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• ISSN: 0954-5867
• ISSN (Online): 1474-0621
• Published Online: 23 December 2022
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © The Author(s), 2022
• First Published: First published in Cambridge Opera Journal 34(3):293-308
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy