Otello’s misbehavior spoils Verdi’s opera

Giuseppe Verdi was 73 and had taken a 15-year hiatus from composing when he set the sordid story “Otello” to music in 1887.

A lifelong admirer of Shakespeare, Verdi wrote what some consider his masterpiece, a groundbreaker for tragic opera and a propellingly imaginative role for the orchestra. Some felt Verdi and the librettist Arrigo Boito were at the height of their creative powers on this project.

Yet there are those who point to “Otello” as simply bad art. One leading opera director in Britain called Italian Romantic opera “betassled pantomimic nonsense.” Quite often in melodramatic productions, that appears, sadly, to be true. Large gestures — vocal, orchestral or dramatic — come off as cartoonish.

To rescue an opera as emotionally overcharged as “Otello,” the director must have an extraordinarily sharp vision and a dynamic sense of drama. Otherwise, the production slips into grandiloquence, which comes dangerously close to silliness.

This was this case Sunday at the Maine Center for the Arts where the Italian National Opera, directed by Riccardo Canessa, closed a four-week American tour with Verdi’s “Otello.”

Even though there were no knock-out soloists, the elements of good music were in place — hefty voices, bombastic choral work, a live orchestra. What was missing was the drama — and that’s not too much to ask of opera, even if the larger point has to do with sound.

Without theatrical thrust, that ever-so-tiny suspension of disbelief necessary for opera is in ever-so-big trouble. Indeed, Sunday’s production sagged and dragged until, finally, some might have been relieved when the main characters met their fates.

For staging, the performers did little more than walk back and forth on stage, clench their fists, furrow their brows and drop to their knees for admonishment, prayer or mercy.

But the most problematic characterization, which set the tone for the afternoon, was Otello. It may have once been fashionable to play the Moor as barbaric and unfit for gentile society, but gone are the naive days of that particular type of savagery. Otello has rightly returned to his noble roots, a man of dignity outdone by the feral Iago.

In Sunday’s production, Otello behaved more like a spoiled brat, dragging his feet and throwing his cape like a whiny tenor. The lack of heroism transformed the show into more of a concert than a theatrical experience. Instead of prodding the music forward, the staging stalled this production, making it musically competent but stylistically flat.