Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Otello

A revival of Adrian Noble’s abstract and dark production of Verdi’s Otello fields a strong cast led by Jonas Kaufmann, Ludovic Tézier and Rachel Willis-Sørensen. 

The Met's first European tour in 20 years makes it to London for an evening of Shakespeare and Berlioz.

The Royal Opera's revival of Keith Warner's staging feels underbaked, although interest is largely focused on the pit as the latest contender to take over from Antonio Pappano as Music Director is auditioned.

Gwyn Hughes Jones, Elizabeth Llewellyn and Sir Simon Keenlyside star in David Alden's setting of Otello in a militarised Cyprus.

Splendid performances by Yonghoon Lee and Karah Son breathe life into Harry Kupfer’s 20-year-old production.

The American must be one of the few tenors to tackle both Rossini and Verdi's Moor with success. 

The combination of a strong, spirited cast and a first-rate orchestral performance led by Daniele Callegari rendered the opera a moving experience in spite of drab staging and latent, unexplored tensions.

Jonas Kaufmann and Anja Harteros, the “Royal couple” of the Bayerische Staatsoper, enchant and melt hearts as the doomed lovers in Verdi’s late masterpiece.

During the “Salce” and “Ave Maria” in Act Four Bezsmertna turned this to magical effect, thinning out and floating her shimmering soprano into gossamer threads.

Zubin Mehta conducts Verdi's Otello in an iconic Robert Wilson production of stylized theater where less is more. The effect was mesmerizing.  

When it comes to the title role, Bartlett Sher's non-interventionist production misses the core of the character. 

Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic unleash the darkness of Verdi’s late masterpiece Otello upon the picnickers at the Hollywood Bowl. 

With Verdi's Otello, Music Director Robert Spano continues a recent Atlanta Symphony Orchestra tradition of presenting grand operatic works in a concert hall version

Cura's powerful spinto tenor impressed from his opening “Esultate!” and left no doubt as to the Moor's authority.

After all the speculation, Jonas Kaufmann made his role debut as Otello at The Royal Opera – an impressive, if not unqualified, success. 

A fascinating, psychologically penetrating reading of Verdi’s penultimate opera, performed to the highest standards, promises much for the new season at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein. 

A lacklustre season opening at Teatro Real proves once again the elusive nature of Verdi's masterpiece.

Roberto Frontali is a stern, chillingly immobile Iago, armed with a brassy voice and a cleanness of diction that sees him carve Boito's text with surgical precision.

Underwhelming performances, all too tempestuous conducting and an aesthetically pleasing but puzzling production fail to thrill.

“If music be the food of love, play on, give me excess of it.” There was certainly plenty of Shakespeare-inspired music on the bill for the London Philharmonic Orchestra's celebration of The Bard. 

Little mark of Shakespeare's drama or Verdi's passion behind Bartlett Sher's exsanguinated, highly-stylized Otello for The Metropolitan Opera.

The unclear ideas and the excessive blackness in Thalheimer’s concept failed to convince, but Stoyanov and Joel’s presentation of Verdi’s score made up for those problems.

An impressive trio of international singers carry Opéra de Montréal's traditional new production of this Verdi tragedy.

Bartlett Sher’s new production of Verdi's Otello opens the Metropolitan Opera's season in a staging dominated by multimedia sets.

Imagine a 21st century aircraft carrier on station in the Middle East instead of a 15th century Cyprus garrison. And, surprise, surprise, it seems to fit the story even better!

in Turin, British director Walter Sutcliffe sets Otello right in the middle of a never-ending battle and Gianandrea Noseda leads a passionate, rigorous account of the score. 

“Beware, my Lord, of jealousy” warns Iago, planting the seed of doubt in Otello’s mind. Beware, too, the dangers of preconceptions. Keen anticipation of this new production of Verdi’s Otello was tempered by the prospect of David Alden as director.

From Otello's opening thunderstorm, Myung Whun Chung and the Orchestre Philharmonique de France leave us gasping, while Alagna turns in a magnetic performance in the title role.

On Harry Kupfer's dramatic set, strong performances by Simon O'Neill (Otello), Lianna Haroutounian (Desdemona) and especially Claudio Sgura (Iago) make Opera Australia's Otello a memorable revival.

A great singing cast and an excellent conducting for the unveiling of Otello's ghosts in Naples.

In his 2011 book Verdi and/or Wagner, currently doing the rounds in libraries across the UK for obvious reasons, Peter Conrad devotes the best of 400 pages to essentially draw all sorts of divisive lines: the sensual Italian song versus the cerebral German symphony; the radically different conceptions of tragedy (“Tragedy in Wagner is an act of will […] Verdi’s characters, unlike Wagner’s, would p

Small London company Midsummer Opera's production of Verdi's huge Otello was extremely ambitious, with a full orchestra filling St Johns Church, Waterloo. Tenor John Upperton took on a lot, acting as chorusmaster as well as singing Otello, and he took the evening's vocal honours.

Amid red carpets and canapés, the Lyric Opera’s 2013/14 season opened on Saturday night with a work that perfectly suited the storm gathering above as ball-gowned luminaries swept into the hall: Verdi’s Otello, that late masterpiece of mood and terraced intensities.

There were some not-to-be-missed performances last evening in Verdi’s Otello at the Staatsoper.Dmitri Hvorostovsky is a god amongst men whose interpretation of Iago, Otello’s villainous ensign, was completely on the mark. Resplendent in his white ponytail, black leather and tattoos, he completely embodied the treacherous scoundrel bent on Otello’s destruction.

Few operas begin as arrestingly as Verdi’s Otello; no overture here – or, indeed, the first act of Shakespeare’s play. Instead, in a single galvanising orchestral outburst a terrific storm is set in motion, underpinned by the most gratingly dissonant of pedals in the lowest reaches of the organ.

The devil, they say, has all the best lines. In yesterday's performance of Verdi's Otello at the Met, the villain was simply sensational. Falk Struckmann's delivery of Jago's Credo in un Dio crudel (“I believe in a cruel God”) was a masterpiece of nihilism, combining power and richness of voice with a tone of pure, matter of fact evil.

Read our review of Renée Fleming's production of Verdi­'s Otello in its 2012 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

Giuseppe Verdi and Arrigo Boito's Otello is renowned as one of the few truly successful Shakespearean operas, and while it's mostly a masterpiece on its own terms rather than Shakespeare's – countless scenes and characters are cut, and the very Verdian drinking song goes on far longer than you'd probably expect – there remains a hint of the brilliance of characterisation with which Shakespeare's p

Otello is usually considered to be Verdi’s most mature opera. It was one of the last ones he wrote, the result of a plot by his publisher Riccordi and the conductor Franco Faccio to draw him out of early retirement. The result is a work which combines all the aspects of Verdi’s earlier operatic style with Wagner’s concept of Gesamtkunstwerk.

In 1971, the thirty year-old Placido Domingo made his Covent Garden début as Cavaradossi in Puccini's Tosca and in the intervening forty years, he has given two hundred and thirty performances in more than twenty-five roles for Royal Opera House audiences.

Otello, Verdi’s penultimate opera, is a tightly-wound setting of Shakespeare’s familiar tragedy. From the opening storm to the title character dying upon a kiss, it is more fragmentary and emotionally cool than his earlier work, an opera that tends to be more admired than loved.

Si elle conserve une science des équilibres et de l'accompagnement, la direction de Zubin Mehta ne transmet pas l'urgence du drame de Verdi. Le plateau vocal offre une performance contrastée.

Le baryton français incarne corps, voix et âme le personnage maléfique de l'Otello de Verdi, dans une version de concert mémorable donnée au Grand Théâtre de Provence.

Amélie Niermeyers Inszenierung von Verdis Spätwerk fasziniert im unaufgeregt fokussierten Blick auf die Charaktere des Tragödienspiels.

Après de longs mois de fermeture, l'Opéra de Saint-Étienne accueille à nouveau son public pour un Otello servi par une belle distribution, où se distingue la Desdemona de Gabrielle Philiponet.

Stephen Gould und Krassimira Stoyanova triumphieren in einer unaufregenden Wohlfühlinszenierung von Adrian Noble.

Erstklassig besetzt und szenisch ins Heute geholt lässt Giuseppe Verdis Oper nicht nur Tenor-Fan-Herzen höher schlagen.

À l'Opéra Bastille, le retour de la mise en scène d'Andrei Serban produit un Otello mitigé, où l'étincelante Aleksandra Kurzak répond à un Roberto Alagna défaillant.