The third in BBC2's season of Verdi operas. Tonight starring with the Chorus and Orchestra of the Welsh National Opera conducted by Richard Armstrong
Libretto by Borro after SHAKESPEARE
'It is the way in which Stein draws together all the elements -movement, design, lighting - as a vivid theatrical entity, which makes such a strong impression. The opera is seen, as it were, as a sequence of paintings ...
(DAILY TELEGRAPH)
Crowning BBC2's Verdi season is Peter Stein 's visually exciting production, widely acclaimed as one of the major operatic achievements of the 1980s, given in Stein's own special television realisation in the opera's centenary year. 'Otello is a great work because it conveys the drama of Shakespeare's play in musical terms, because the psychological acumen of its musical characterisation is so penetrating, and because it conveys with such accuracy that combination of tenderness, violence and sensuality typical of the Elizabethan age.'
(CHARLES OSBORNE)
Act I
Cyprus: the port outside the castle Act II
A hall in the castle
8.55*
Interval with Julian Budden , one of the world's leading
Verdi authorities, who also introduces the opera.
9.3*
Act III
In the great hall of the castle Act IV
Desdemona's bedroom
Costumes MOIDELE BICKEL Set designer LUCIO FANTI
WNO: Make-up PETER OWEN BBC: Sound GEOFF ATKINS Lighting STAN JONES
Videotape editor MEL WILLIAMS
Subtitles by GILLIAN WIDDICOMBE
Executive producer MERVYN WILLIAMS Stage and television direction by PETER STEIN
A simultaneous broadcast with Radio 3.
Viewers with stereo Radio 3 may wish to turn off TV sound and position their speakers on either side of the screen, but a few feet away.
Stereo headphones provide a suitable alternative.