What’s the point of the Met’s new Otello?

The new production of Verdi’s Otello at the Met, with set designs by Ed Devlin, did make me wonder, as I watched it in the Cambridge Picture House, why they had bothered, since in no respect does it improve on many traditional productions. The sets are kind of sumptuous, but then what looked like a solid wooden or stone building turns out to be perspex, with neon lighting, and liable to slide around for no obvious reason. The costumes are suitably period, lavish, spotless. From the cinema-goer’s point of view, the most irritating thing is that the camera remains almost always on the person singing. This is especially exasperating in Otello, where so many of the scenes of dialogue take place between someone who is attempting to have a strong effect on the other person, and the recipient’s response is just as crucial as that of the speaker/singer. So for instance Iago’s successive successful attempts to goad Otello into murderous jealousy, and Desdemona’s harrowingly tactless appeals for clemency for Cassio.