From Shakespeare's OTHELLO
to Verdi's OTELLO

at the Rosedale Golf Club

Saturday 16th January and
Sunday 17th January, 2010

10:00 am to 4:00 pm each day
$250 (including two lunches)

Register here

 

Shakespeare's "OTHELLO" is a tightly-constructed tragedy, ideal for transmutation into an opera.

For most of the 19th century, Gioachino Rossini's 1816 version was the definitive opera adaptation, but its eclipse began with the masterly transposition of the work for the lyric stage by librettist Arrigo Boito in 1879. Boito and Verdi then worked for nearly a decade on what would be a completely new kind of Italian opera.

When the new work was premiered in 1887 at La Scala, it caused a sensation. For many people, it is the pinnacle of the Italian form of opera -- concise, melodic, dramatic and heart-wrenching.

We will attempt a scene by scene comparison of the Shakespeare original with its operatic transformation.