Otello SF Chronicle 10-11-02 - San Francisco Opera

The San Francisco Chronicle
OCTOBER 11, 2002, FRIDAY, FINAL EDITION
Verdi's 'Otello' betrayed by uncertainty;
Soprano radiant, but tenor and baritone struggle
SOURCE: Chronicle Music Critic
BYLINE: Joshua Kosman
SECTION: DAILY DATEBOOK; Pg. D3
LENGTH: 781 words
If the folks at the San Francisco Opera could sell tickets just to hear Patricia Racette sing the Willow Song and
"Ave Maria" from the fourth and final act of Verdi's "Otello," then they'd have something.
Unfortunately, "Otello" is a package deal. And getting to those sublime 10 minutes meant slogging through
the rest of Wednesday night's dispiritingly mediocre opening at the War Memorial Opera House.
This is the company's first revival of Verdi's great tragedy in more than a decade, and it isn't a disaster by
any means. There are moments of passable vocalism, some strong orchestral playing (particularly in the opening
storm scene) and choral singing, and one or two telling bits of stagecraft.
But none of it added up Wednesday to more than an assemblage of disparate parts, loosely strung together
and ambling casually toward its murderous conclusion. For a piece as tautly and forcefully constructed as
"Otello," that's just a shame.
Some of the disappointment could be chalked up to bad luck, perhaps. Ben Heppner was originally
scheduled to sing the title role but canceled because of vocal difficulties, leaving tenor Jon Frederic West to
struggle his way through the daunting assignment.
But West's travails were only the most prominent problem in an evening that was consistently beset by
uncertainty and dramatic listlessness, and inflated by three extended intermissions to nearly four hours.
Even Music Director Donald Runnicles, who can usually light a fire under a performance this desultory,
seemed to have misplaced his energetic sense of purpose somewhere on the way to the Opera House.
What the production most resembled was one of the weaker efforts from the waning years of the Lotfi
Mansouri regime, with its patchwork casting and air of inconsequentiality. That impression was reinforced by
director Emilio Sagi's clunky production from the Washington Opera, an echo of his ungainly 1998 San Francisco
debut with Verdi's "Don Carlo."
Amid all this lassitude, Racette's singing was a welcome beacon of clarity and artistic focus, although she too
seemed a little tentative about her characterization through the early acts.
SAN FRANCISCO OPERA Education Materials OTELLO Reviews

But in the last act, she simply shrugged off the surrounding distractions and turned the Willow Song and "Ave
Maria" into a radiant extended concert piece. Her phrasing was fluent and alluring, her dynamic shadings
intimately responsive to the music. For once, the performance's effect was transfixing.
West got off to an especially unfortunate start, singing Otello's great first entrance ("Esultate!") under pitch
and without much vocal heft.
Thereafter, he fared best in the opera's more intimate passages, including a reasonably affecting account of
"Niun mi tema" at the end. But the role's heroic writing left him lunging uncomfortably for notes, and his stage
presence was a grab bag of the most cliched telegraphic postures.
As Iago, baritone Sergei Leiferkus sounded out of his element, as he so often does in non-Russian
repertoire. His dry, rusty tone and unreliable pitch, together with his tendency to bawl out many of his lines
through weirdly elongated vowels, robbed his performance of much sense of danger or theatrical flourish; his
account of the "Credo" was dismayingly inert.
The rest of the cast held up its end reliably, though without much flash. Raymond Very's sweet tenor
sounded strained as Cassio, but Catherine Cook was an impassioned Emilia, Philip Skinner an authoritative
Montano, and Eric Owens, in a company debut, a strong-toned Lodovico.
Sagi's staging shed no particular light on the opera. His main ideas seemed to be, as in "Don Carlo," to hide
performers away behind the big walls and porticos of Zack Brown's elephantine sets whenever possible, and to
have Otello tumble down the stairs not once but twice.
OPERA
OTELLO: The San Francisco Opera performs Verdi's opera seven more times through Nov. 1 at the War
Memorial Opera House. Tickets: $24-$175. (415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com.
'OTELLO' on CD
Tenor Jon Vickers is a good first choice for the title role, and his dashing, ardent interpretation can be heard
either in a 1973 performance conducted by Herbert von Karajan, with Mirella Freni as Desdemona (EMI Classics)
or an earlier recording with Leonie Rysanek and the great Tito Gobbi as Iago (RCA). Other commanding Otellos
include Placido Domingo, who has recorded the role numerous times -- most successfully in 1978 under James
Levine (RCA) -- and Mario del Monaco, whose heroic performance under Karajan (Decca) is a keeper.
E-mail Joshua Kosman at jkosman@sfchronicle.com
LOAD-DATE: October 11, 2002
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO, Sergei Leiferkus (left) as Iago and Jon Frederic West as Otello in the San Francisco
Opera's "Otello." / Larry Merkle
TYPE: RELATED STORY ATTACHED; RELATED STORY ATTACHED
Copyright 2002 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
SAN FRANCISCO OPERA Education Materials OTELLO Reviews