Verdi's 'Otello' and Rossini's

Author(s): John W. Klein

Source: Music & Letters , Apr., 1964, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Apr., 1964), pp. 130-140
Published by: Oxford University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/732071

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 VERDI'S 'OTELLO' AND ROSSINI'S

BY JOHN W. KLEIN

ON 20 February I818 Byron wrote to John Murray:

night I am going to see 'Otello', an opera from our 'Oth
of Rossini's best, it is said. It will be curious to see i
Venetian story itself represented; besides to discover w
make of Shakespeare in Music." However, when a w
heard 'Otello', he was dismayed. So atrocious was th
fantastically unintelligent the mutilation of the drama
the utmost difficulty in recognizing in such a farrago th
accents of Shakespeare's tragic genius. "They have bee
'Othello' into an opera", he growled; "all the real scen
cut out, and the greatest nonsense instead; the handker
into a billet-doux." This was his justifiably scathing
Rossini's opera as drama. Yet he found the music of
composer "good but lugubrious"; what he had alway
disliked was insipid gravity and monotony. Exhilarat
loved most of all, even-or especially-in a tragedy. He
enjoyed 'Carmen'.
On the whole he proved a more discerning judge
professional critics. For Rossini's first relatively ser
anything but adventurous; like Ambroise Thomas with
half a century later, he had rushed in where angels fea
tackled a subject wholly beyond his emotional range, ev
moments his Desdemona is less blatantly exhibitionistic t
Ophelia. No doubt Beethoven was thinking of 'Ot
somewhat tactlessly reminded Rossini that a cobbler sho
his last. Contemptuously he informed him: "Seriou
suited to the Italians. You simply don't possess suffi
knowledge to deal with real drama: how could you po
it in Italy ? If you attempt to write anything but opera buff
doing violence to your own nature". At the time this h
may have seemed sensible enough; but while Beethov
down the law, not merely for Rossini but also for his e
nine-year-old boy, who would receive no academi
whatever, was growing up in Busseto; he was destined t
world the presumption of so dogmatic and jingoistic a p
130

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VERDI'S COTELLO' AND ROSSINI S I3I

However, to do Beethoven justice, he was obviously acquain

only with works like 'Otello'. It is therefore understandable that
should have shared Byron's antagonism towards an opera purporti
to be tragic and yet frequently degrading one of Shakespear
greatest works to the level of a crude and unconvincing melodram
It is well-nigh incomprehensible that such a sombre theme, altoget
at loggerheads with Rossini's own jovial nature, should ever h
attracted the composer of so many scintillating comedies. But the
he had always possessed a hankering after tragedy. Perhaps if
could have tackled 'Otello' thirteen years later, after 'Guillau
Tell', the result might have been less dismal, for by then he
developed a totally unexpected artistic integrity. What ultima
tempted him, in the very same year in which he composed
barbiere di Siviglia', to come to grips with so unsuitable a theme?
his vast but singularly pedestrian and unrevealing correspondence
never once mentions Shakespeare's name, though there is
unauthenticated tale that, after reading 'Othello', he exclaim
"My blood froze!" There is, however, too little indication of t
frame of mind in his frigid score. Verdi, on the other hand, stud
Shakespeare, "this greatest authority on the heart of man", from
earliest youth; in his letters there are innumerable enthusia
references to him. Nothing indeed reveals the personalities of the
composers more piercingly than their different attitudes to Shak
speare: Rossini's was on the whole one of bored nonchalan
Verdi's that of passionate hero-worship.
Yet in some vague fashion Rossini was aware of his daring, of
great challenge he was now facing. Obviously he had no clear-
plan; but an adroit librettist might have enabled him to avoid
worst pitfalls. Unfortunately the Marchese Francesco Berio di Sal
("an unmentionable literary hack", grumbles Stendhal) w
determined to please nearly everybody, and the surest way of do
this, for a brief while at least, is complete lack of enterprise
originality-in a word, cowardice. Berio, who regarded Shakesp
as a barbarian, eliminated his disgusting handkerchief and replace
by a nondescript letter and a lock of hair. Imagining that Roderi
(of all persons) was really the hero, he ended by providing t
composer with the silliest of libretti, a bewildering hotchpotc
quite incredible situations. In comparison with this, the sensation
'poems' that Scribe condescendingly manufactured for Meyer
and Halevy may be described as veritable masterpieces. Berio
wretched concoction is in sober truth what the seventeenth-cent
critic Thomas Rymer dared to say of Shakespeare's tragedy: "N

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132 MUSIC AND LETTERS

other than a Bloody Farce without salt or savour". At moments one

cannot help wondering whether the librettist had even gone to the
trouble of reading Shakespeare at all. It is as though he
had deliberately fallen back on Cinzio Giraldi's melodramatic tale,
which so mysteriously and powerfully inspired Shakespeare-a story
cruder and more distasteful but definitely more realistic than the
librettist's own pitiful handiwork. A vital character such as Iago is
hardly developed; yet if the sinister ancient is reduced to the level of
a mere interloper, less important even than Desdemona's father,
there can be no mounting tension, indeed, no drama at all. It is a
curious fact that 'Othello' should have inspired not only the very
worst of all important Shakespearean tragic libretti (far less faithful
to the original than Thomas's much abused 'Hamlet') but also the
very best.
In his admirable Verdi biography Francis Toye remarks: "The
chorus of praise sung by Boieldieu, Stendhal, Cherubini, de Musset
and Lamartine over an opera like 'Otello' can scarcely be surpassed
in the annals of music. These, be it remembered, were not the views
of men ignorant in matters of music or general aesthetics". Toye
shrewdly stresses this fulsomely uncritical attitude towards Rossini
shown'by the majority of his eminent contemporaries. It was,
however, no passing phase; even as late as 1892, at the time of the
centenary of Rossini's birth, so fanatical a Wagnerite as Bernard
Shaw could write: "If we are to have any Rossini celebrations, the
best opera for the purpose will be 'Otello', partly because the
comparison between it and Verdi's latest work would be interesting,
and partly because it is one of the least obsolete of his operas. It is
worth half-a-dozen 'Semiramides'."
Nevertheless, in Toye's impressive list of the admirers of 'Otello'
I myself would have hesitated to include Stendhal. Though the
brilliant biographer of Rossini tends to be disconcertingly con
tradictory in some of his critical judgments, from the very outset he
discerned the really hopeless inadequacy of 'Otello' as a valid
interpretation of Shakespeare. Above all, he was far too penetrating
a judge of human nature to be deafened, or merely influenced, b
the almost hysterical enthusiasm of the crowd or, for that matter, o
the critics themselves. He knew that Rossini had failed; that this wa
the sole important tragic opera that left him completely unmoved.
"Rien de plus froid" was his devastating comment. Justifiably h
was not only disappointed but incensed by the libretto, which
transformed Shakespeare's sublime tragedy-"the most passionate
of all"-into an inane French drawing-room farce, into the mos

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VERDI'S 'OTELLO' AND ROSSINI'S I33

sordid kind of"conte de Barbe-Bleue". The first time he heard i

was no less disillusioned than Byron; and for a lengthy pe
could not bear to listen to a work which seemed to him "an or
blunders", for it outraged his profound belief in the reality o
itself. Never before, in his opinion, had Rossini's complete
genuine emotion, of any profundity, been more pitilessly rev
Such an adverse verdict would, he knew very well, be sca
relished; but fortunately he possessed enough courage to expr
views not only lucidly but with the utmost bluntness.
Trenchantly he summarizes his final impressions: "Rossini
happy, too gay, too greedy for so tragic a subject. He can deli
amuse, but never move us, as Mozart can". In Almaviva's
'Figaro':
Vedro, mentr' io sospiro,
Felice un servo mio!

he felt that there was more subtle insight into the harrowing nature
of jealousy than in all Othello's violent outbursts. Yet 'Figaro' was
meant to be a light-hearted comedy, whereas 'Otello' was,
presumably, a "terrifying" tragedy. Unfortunately, neither Rossini
nor his aristocratic librettist glimpsed the anguish they were supposed
to be portraying. All they could see was an insensitive and brutal
husband whose inordinate vanity had been wounded, not a great-
hearted man whose happiness had been irremediably destroyed.
Completely ignoring Shakespeare, they had partly reverted to the
primitive, and this time really 'barbarous', Cinzio Giraldi.
Stendhal's boldness in criticizing 'Otello' when it was almost
universally acclaimed as the quintessence of sublime tragedy cannot
be sufficiently praised, all the more so since he is occasionally regarded,
at any rate in his capacity as a music critic, either as a dilettante or
an ultra-mercenary hack. Nevertheless, one may justifiably add that
his passionate admiration for Shakespeare rendered him totally
oblivious of some indisputable merits in Rossini's curious and uneven
work. For the usually rather insensitive composer was conscious at
times of the sufferings and disillusionment of the wronged Desdemona;
it was this realization that saved his opera from utter futility. In
fact, the sole personal relationship that is developed with some
consistency is that between Desdemona and Emilia; the servant's
touching fidelity is tenderly suggested. Bizet, one of whose three
favourite composers was Rossini (the other two being Mozart and
Wagner), with that rare objectivity that forsook him only once
(in the case of Verdi), admired the plaintive last act; in his opinion,

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I34 MUSIC AND LETTERS

it was one of Rossini's few achievements that might survive; a feeble

and "boring" opera had unpredictably culminated in beauty.
As Schubert also realised, Desdemona's fate is steeped in some
of the loveliest music that Rossini ever conceived, music which
Stendhal, in one of his more capricious outbursts, unfairly stigmatized
as merely "correct, inoffensive ... and nothing more!" Her Willow
Song, if less sustained than Verdi's, has a Britten-like quality of
ethereal purity. There is a spiritual link between this Desdemona and
Lucretia; her pathos is singularly restrained, never forced. We can
understand how in this role Maria Malibran succeeded in achieving
an unforgettably tragic effect, inspiring Alfred de Musset to one of
his most haunting poems. No less beautiful is the effective inter-
polation of Dante's celebrated verses:

Nessun maggior dolore

Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria.

Sung almost forlornly in the distance by a romantic gondolier, this is

perhaps the noblest inspiration in the whole work.
Yet the final tragic duet (so stormy and compelling in Verdi's
masterpiece) is too unimaginatively, even coarsely handled. Particu-
larly unconvincing is the incongruous intrusion of the crescendo of
Don Basilio's satirical Calumny Aria from 'I1 barbiere', which had
also been used in the semi-heroic 'Sigismondo' only fourteen months
previously. Why could Rossini never resist the temptation of using
the same idea twice or even three times in a couple of years? When,
subsequently, in a bowdlerized version produced in Rome, Venice
and Ancona, he replaces this unsatisfactory duet by a happy ending,
we are less taken aback than by the preposterous finale of Verdi's
otherwise magnificent 'Don Carlo'. How could one expect a tragic
ending to an opera that had never made the slightest attempt to be
consistently serious? It might deal, on the whole, fairly sympatheti-
cally with Desdemona; but, alas, the most vital factor of all-a noble
and impassioned hero-was conspicuous by its absence. And this
(even if we ignore the casual treatment of Iago) was a fatal flaw.
Ultimately a work which, apart from one act, was never more than
perfunctorily dramatic was doomed to fade into a museum piece.
Yet the long and unexpected vogue of Rossini's widely acclaimed
'Shakespearean masterpiece' partly contributed to Verdi's initial
and enigmatic lack of interest in the subject; it gave substance to his
doubts and torturing misgivings. For years he hesitated at the thought
of competing with Rossini; and it was surely this final eloquent act

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VERDI S 'OTELLO' AND ROSSINI S I35

that rendered his decision particularly difficult. At f

nor Ricordi, who both stigmatized Rossini's ope
caricature of Shakespeare", had dared to suggest
subject to him; Boito had even been prepared to h
his heart of hearts he regarded as his best libretto (
his most original and boldly conceived poem), 'Neron
sacrifice of his favourite work he had nerved himself to make for the
sake of the master he now revered, but whom in November i863 he
had thoughtlessly and wantonly insulted, as few (not even Wagner)
had ever dared to do. In an ode which for a man of his penetrating
intellect was incredibly foolish he had extravagantly praised, at
Verdi's expense, Franco Faccio, a mere mediocrity as a composer,
welcoming him as the idealistic pioneer "born to restore art in its
purity on the altar now defiled like the wall of a brothel (lupanar)".
Those were unworthy taunts that Verdi never forgot or entirely
forgave, that he repeated and paraphrased for nearly twenty years
with justifiable bitterness and indignation. Above all, it was that
detestable word lupanar that rankled in his mind. No wonder he
took so long before he could be prevailed upon to bury the hatchet.
Moreover, at the time when Boito imagined that Italian opera was
at its lowest, vile and opportunistic, it was about to soar to its most
glorious heights.
There are, however, few more impressive and heroic examples of
tireless perseverance than Boito's relentless struggle to induce the
man he had so ineptly belittled and incensed to grapple with a
subject for which he was clearly predestined, even though he himself
might only be dimly aware of the fact. It is generally considered
elementary common sense not to bully another into a task from which
he instinctively recoils for the most convincing of all reasons-that he
regards himself as incapable of doing full justice to the theme. Yet in
the annals of music there is no more arresting instance of an austere
intellectual who, though he had publicly and unfairly denounced a
popular idol, revealed himself in the end as immeasurably more
conscious of the tremendous potentialities of his genius than Verdi's
most enthusiastic admirers. Occasionally indeed an even cruel
criticism may unseal the secret fountains of a great musician's
inspiration-and that more rewardingly than all the praise and
encouragement in the world. The youthful Boito had dreamt of a pure
and noble art remote from the degrading sensationalism of his age;
he found it in the very man in whom that debased spirit had seemed
incarnate, "the greatest personality I have ever been privileged to
meet-and I knew Wagner."

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136 MUSIC AND LETTERS

Yet the astute critic himself, no less complex than the master, had
his own grave defects, perhaps chief of which was his obsession with
evil. Even in his own 'Mefistofele' he had laboriously inflated the
monstrous figure of "the spirit that denies" at the expense of the more
significant Faust. So now in 'Otello' he insisted on the supremacy of
Iago, whose crucial importance had never even dawned upon the
obtuse Rossini. Sheer diabolical wickedness fascinated Boito; it is
singularly revealing that the most vital and original character in one
of his early libretti, 'La Gioconda', which he wrote for Ponchielli, is
the treacherous spy Barnaba. It was Boito who, after his 'Otello'
libretto had been completed, deliberately interpolated the 'Credo'.
In some respects this was a brilliant idea, for the aria (dismissed by
Ernest Newman as "only the routine expression of operatic wicked-
ness") has its moments of rugged grandeur. Yet it has met with less
approval than any other major inspiration in this marvellous score.
"You, Verdi", exclaimed the famous Shakespearean actor Tommaso
Salvini, "have turned Iago into a melodramatic villain with his
'Credo' and his outcry of 'Ecco il leone'."
Indeed, Boito's growing obsession with Iago (he had even
wished him to make a Mephistophelian appearance during the love
duet) imperilled the balance of the whole drama; it led to the curious
idea that the opera should be entitled 'Iago' (obviously in order to
placate the manes of the glorious Rossini) instead of the far more
appropriate 'Otello'. Despite his superb craftsmanship, Boito did not
wholly grasp that at times he was in danger of sacrificing the noble
hero to a mean rascal, "the damned, inhuman dog" whom Shakes-
peare had so relentlessly depicted. Perhaps, ultimately, both he and
Verdi realized this peril: to ignore it would have meant undermining
the very foundations as well as the essential grandeur of the whole
work. Some such sudden anxiety may account for what has
occasionally struck me as possibly a curious miscalculation in this
uniquely skilful and plausible libretto. Iago, so powerfully built up
act by act, crumbles ignominiously in the last. In the first half of the
opera he is, if anything, a more formidable figure than Shakespeare's
own creation; but in the final scene he slinks away like "the very
great coward" of Giraldi's crude and cruel tale. On the other hand
the Iago of the tragedy stands as if rooted to the spot: erect, defiant,
remorseless, with a touch of indomitable courage that saves him from
becoming utterly contemptible. Shakespeare was bent on making him
the spectator of his own evil work, yet not a joyous or com-
placent spectator, for prolonged torture and death are to be his
reward.

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VERDI'S 'OTELLO' AND ROSSINI S I37

No doubt at that crucial moment Boito and Verdi wished to

concentrate entirely on the Moor's farewell to Desdemona; in all
opera there is no more exquisite marriage of beautiful poetry and
poignant music than in Othello's words:
E tu ... Come sei pallida! e stanca, e muta, e bella,
Pia creatura nata sotto maligna stella

(as perfect in its way as Shakespeare's own magical phrase). None the
less, a baffling enigma confronts us here: why is it that something
undeniably effective and moving in opera should appear a trifle
inadequate and colourless in drama ? In the last scene of Shakespeare's
tragedy we need the presence of the 'demi-devil" gazing sullenly at
"the tragic loading of this bed." In the opera, all the same, it may
have been a wise precaution to eliminate him, as though in that
extreme anguish his very presence would have been sacrilege.
Peremptorily Verdi (who had toyed with the preposterous idea of an
unexpected Turkish attack at the end of the third act) insisted now
on the severe concision of the final "terrifying" scene. In the end,
however much he respected Boito, however desperately he strove to
subjugate his inborn irascibility for the sake of his ultra-sensitive
collaborator, he did impose his will upon him as the tragedy reached
its climax. Above all, he was resolved to achieve speed at all costs.
Ruthlessly Othello's marvellous final speech (which Boito had already
translated impeccably, though Dyneley Hussey in his eloquent
Verdi biography affirms that he "very wisely" refrained from doing
so) was swept aside as superfluous; the hero stabbed himself without
further ado. Yet, if Verdi now desired Iago to disappear into such an
utter void, why did he agree to introduce the 'Credo', which gives
the scoundrel almost heroic proportions, as if he were Milton's
Lucifer himself? Indeed, he seems to have set out to establish him as
the central figure of his work; then, abruptly, he discards him
altogether, like some imperious grand seigneur dismissing an incom-
petent lackey.
Nevertheless, the advance on Rossini is little short of stupendous.
Not merely did a more powerful genius tackle the superb theme, but
also a man of far greater artistic integrity. Yet it was only after
endless discussions that Verdi resolved to measure swords with the
musician whom many critics still persisted in acclaiming as the
greatest Italian composer of the nineteenth century. He certainly
overrated Rossini, for he had been scandalized when Ambroise
Thomas (in what was surely the strangest and most unconventional
funeral oration ever delivered) went out of his way to condemn the

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138 MUSIC AND LETTERS

late master's "frivolity and sensuality". On the other hand Verdi

himself felt strangely humble. "I had rather people said", he wrote,
"that I had wished to fight with the giant and received a sound
drubbing for my pains than that I was skulking behind the name of
lago". There was little danger of any such humiliation; indeed, by
boldly facing the challenge, Verdi finally unmasked one of Rossini's
most successful works as hopelessly inadequate and shallow. Yet
in 'Bishop Blougram's Apology' Browning, "pining among my
million imbeciles", had dared to represent the great master as a
blustering vulgarian recoiling, abashed, amidst the "mad plaudits"
of the mob, from the calm, disdainful glance of the noble Rossini,
sitting "patient in his stall." Unostentatiously Verdi proved, not
only that the poet, at least as far as music was concerned, happened
to be little better than an undiscerning prig, but that he himself
was Rossini's superior, not just his unworthy successor. For he
had neither mutilated nor degraded Shakespeare (as his pre-
decessor had done) but in his own medium had matched the dramatist
in eloquence and poignancy. In one crucial scene he had perhaps
surpassed him, for in his opera Desdemona's anguish is even more
profound and heart-rending, while Othello's passionate despair
finds its supreme musical embodiment. Yet it is ironical enough that,
when depicting the figure to whom he had at first devoted the most
concentrated attention, he did not achieve a comparable success; with
perhaps pardonable exaggeration Ernest Newman, while acknowledg-
ing Iago's insinuating grace, summed him up as "never more than so
much flesh and blood in a stage costume". Fundamentally, he strikes
one as a slightly more melodramatic villain than Shakespeare's.
All the same, Verdi's victorious progress from 'Aida' to 'Otello'
remains breath-taking. Never before had he displayed such a
sustained power of absorption in a tremendous task. Of course this
miracle could not have been achieved without Boito's tireless and,
on the whole, wise and understanding assistance; he had tactfully
but instantly scotched one or two of the aged master's more ludicrous
suggestions, reminiscent of the crude melodrama of 'Ernani' or of
the final scene of 'Don Carlo'. Nevertheless, Verdi did display a
constantly growing insight into the very essence of Shakespeare's
genius. In 'Macbeth' he had, to a certain extent, conventionalized
the great dramatist; in 'Otello', on the other hand, he almost
uncannily enhanced the significance of several vital situations, as in
the magical portrayal of Cassio's dream.
He had, however, been compelled to sacrifice one extremely
important scene: Othello's appeal to the Venetian Senate. "Rossini

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VERDI'S cOTELLO' AND ROSSINI'S I39

and Berio had omitted that perfect scene", Stendhal c

with biting sarcasm and growing indignation, "and rep
the triumphant entry of a victorious general-an inspiratio
so original, that, for a whole century and a half, it has fur
gala-attraction of every single grand opera ever perpe
France." In Rossini's work this proved ineffective enough;
Verdi, ignoring both Shakespeare and Stendhal's grim war
exactly the same conventional thing, it proved trem
thrilling and impressive, worth a dozen explanatory speec
Senate. However, in his heart of hearts he feared that by r
Othello chiefly as the lover, alternately devoted and
rather than as the awe-inspiring warrior, he might be red
stature of Shakespeare's hero. Painfully conscious of w
compelled to sacrifice, he continued to doubt and to b
years he had been fascinated by an equivalent if inadequat
in Meyerbeer's 'L'Africaine'. He knew he could out-dis
composer who at that time was still regarded as his most
rival, and at the sound of whose victorious trumpets
(after 'Le Prophete') had announced that the walls o
would fall. But, more acutely than anybody else, Verdi re
time factor in opera that Moussorgsky, Berlioz, Wagne
the otherwise opportunist Meyerbeer, stubbornly decli
into account. Above all, he understood the limitations o
well as those of an audience's patience. It was in an at
console himself for such a renunciation that he decided to introduce
the great council-chamber scene into the final version of 'Simone
Boccanegra' (a wonderful elaboration of a rather conventional and
sketchy finale in a piazza). Boito only agreed to collaborate because
'Otello' still beckoned alluringly, even though he often feared it
might be merely an ever-receding mirage. But here the fibre of his
"partner" (as Verdi gratefully termed Boito) was first put to the
test-and how admirable was the result!
Yet there were still plenty of difficulties ahead. In view of the
splendour of the love duet in 'Otello', one can scarcely blame it
creator for perhaps overplaying his hand. For in this oasis of pur
beauty there is not even a hint of impending disaster. All the more
startling, consequently, is the strange, well-nigh unpredictable
change in Othello's nature from gentleness and worship to insensate
jealousy and rage. One is justified in regarding this 'prestidigitation'
as Hardy might have termed it, as not altogether convincing,
particularly as Othello's love for Desdemona has been revealed
wistfully tender and of a most moving intimacy, without even

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I40 MUSIC AND LETTERS

touch of Shakespeare's occasionally somewhat sultry sensuality. How

often has the sudden passion of Bizet's Don Jose for Carmen been
denounced as flagrantly absurd. Yet in 'Otello' the change is
definitely more bewildering; at moments it seems psychologically
almost untenable. It is only the beauty and persuasiveness of the
music that reconciles us to such a disconcerting transformation and
finally enables us to bridge the chasm.
When all is said and done, 'Otello' is undoubtedly the most
majestic and sublime of all operas inspired by Shakespeare's genius.
In some respects 'Falstaff' may be more perfect; but inevitably it
lacks the dignity and grandeur of its predecessor. It is true that
Richard Strauss in his artistic testament discarded 'Otello' as an
insufferable distortion of a superb tragedy sufficient unto itself
whereas he acclaimed 'Falstaff' as "one of the greatest masterpiece
of all time." But never for an instant did Verdi hesitate: to him
'Falstaff' was chiefly an agreeable relaxation, while 'Otello' had
been a prolonged and strenuous struggle, the fruit of years of toil,
of thought, of mingled ecstasy and pain; it was the triumph of
creative prodigality after years of artistic famine.
When he modestly expressed a hope that the British might not be
too dissatisfied with his version of one of their greatest masterpieces, in
his heart of hearts he knew full well that he had already vanquished
his most virulent critics, both in England and in Germany, that he
had transformed condescending admirers into fanatical worshippers.
If he ever read the amusing but humiliating account of Rossini's
visit to Beethoven, a noble pride must have filled his magnanimous
soul. He had given the lie to Beethoven himself; he had created one
of the three or four supreme tragic operas of all time.

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