Otello 2001
One of the chief pleasures of this live production of Otello from the Berlin Staatsoper Unter den Linden is Daniel Barenboim's conducting. From the opening gale-force blast of storm music, through the crunching and stabbing accompaniment of Iago's "Credo" to the shimmering strings of Desdemona's "Willow Song", he doesn't miss a trick. Everything works at the highest pitch of intensity and the orchestra sticks to his beat like glue. It's a necessary compensation for the shortcomings of the staging: the stolid chorus remains unperturbed by the storm and is directed to perform with unison movements; the acting (apart from Valeri Alexejev) is non-committal, and Alexandre Tarta's video direction somewhat flat-footed. She doesn't manage to make much small-screen sense of an impenetrably murky opening scene, for example, and doesn't seem fond of reaction shots.
- Released: 2001-01-01
- Runtime: 157 minutes
- Genre: Music
- Stars: Christian Franz, Emily Magee, Valeri Alexejev, Stephan Rügamer, Andreas Schmidt
- Director: Doey Lüthi, Arrigo Boito, George Tsypin, Jürgen Flimm, Franz Peter David