Exploiting agony

Verdi’s art reaches its summit in Otello, and in doing so reveals both his greatness and a paradox that seems inseparable from it. The plot is harrowing, more so than any of his other operas, and Verdi exploits its agonising capacities to the full. The glorious love duet which concludes Act I is something to make the most of, for that is the end of happiness, as the act’s final bars suggest.

From then on it is a series of dreadful scenes in which the chief characters, deliberately or not, create as much suffering as possible — suffering which, at least at crucial points, the audience is bound to share in a satisfactory performance. Yet Verdi never forgets that he is writing for an audience which is primarily interested, as the Italians have been for the past 300 years, in performance rather than in drama, or anyway any drama except the battle between the performers and the audience; and he caters with a generosity unique even for him with a drinking song, a villain’s enthusiastic expression of his nihilism, a tormented monologue for the hero, a long sweet song for the heroine, and a rousing duet of vengeance for the hero and villain.