Otello

In terms of audience expectations, opera films are the luckiest in the medium. Whereas comedies have to be funny, action films exciting or mysteries mysterious, opera films could be the dullest, visually incompetent farragos ever, as long as the music is there, booming in all its glory. And, with a few noble exceptions - the Archers, Losey, Bergman - that is in general what we opera lovers have been given: we are that easy to please.

Zeffirelli's OTELLO is far better than the usual, but is, if I may say so under IMDb guidelines, still hampered by a curious mixture of unfounded arrogance, cautious reverence and imaginative timidity. As any fool knows, the best films are founded on melodrama, literally music and drama, just like opera (and many great film-makers have produced opera also). Because action on stage is evidently limited, all the excitement, passion, emotion of characters' feelings and of extreme circumstance are carried by the music, in the same way narrative is less important in the films of, say, Minnelli or Sirk, than the vibrant mise-en-scene which speaks for characters when they cannot.

Opera, therefore, might seem a perfect medium for cinema. In another way, though, it is constricted. A spoken theatre play, for example, can be opened up with relatively little damage, you can create new scenes, add dialogue. But any director of opera carries the millstone of the score - you can cut, but you cannot write new music (or if you did you'd be shot), and so you have to work with what you've got, which increases the theatricality. Again, depending on your genius, you can be limited or liberated by this.

OTELLO benefits from this concentration because it is such an inexorable, claustrophobic piece, where the confinement of setting mirrors the different prisons characters find themselves in. But claustrophobia is uncomfortable, and Zeffirelli is catering to a bourgeois, generally non-cinema going audience, who want a tasteful, middle-brow night out, and so he never explores the opera's intensity as much as he might. And, we are reminded of Welles's OTHELLO, the second greatest Shakespearean adaptation, and know how it can be done.

This is a very traditional interpretation, not just for opera on stage, but for Shakespearean performances as well. We get the usual Cyprus garrison, the Renaissance costumes, the exotic local colour, the play of black and white, the sight of pure Desdemona in white lying on her pure, white bed. But Zeffirelli makes a few 'adjustments' that are not neccessarily in Verdi, but have some justification from Shakespeare. For instance, Desdemona's relations with Cassio are ambiguous, made seemingly sexual from the very beginning, making Otello's rage less irrational, and her 'innocence' more complicated. This might blunt the story's symbolic force, but makes the characterisation more plausible, as does Otello's suspicion from the start, so that Iago's poison is only one factor in the Moor's anguish. These kind of interpretive devices are acceptable, if not exactly enriching. What are less acceptable are the cuts to the score, brief perhaps, but sticking out like tatters on a brocade robe. What's inexplicable is that they're not really needed - unlike, say, 'Die Meistersinger', this opera is the same length as a regular feature - did we really need the orchestral epilogue over the credits, disturbing the cathartic power of the finale? Further, maybe the print I saw was aged, but the sound was very muffled, made more inaudible by intrusive sound effects which are presumably there to heighten the drama, but only serve to irritate (Zeffirelli as Brecht? I don't think so).

Visually, Zeffirelli is no Welles, and his shots are full of the propriety beloved of those who condescend to cinema. There are two sequences - Iago's self-revealing credo and Otello's jealous soliloquy - full of huge metaphysical power, bracing blasphemy and emotional voids that cry out for Welles; in fairness, these are the film's best scenes, but they are suffocated by restraint. Curiously enough, with the excessive zooming, clumsy compostions and unrhythmic editing, the nearest filmmaker to Zeffirelli is Welles' friend Jesse Franco - if the Italian never approaches that maverick's sheer profusion of ideas, there is a gratifying homoeroticism (especially Iago talking about Cassio's dream, immensely revealing or the villain's character) to compensate.

It would be inappropriate to expect astonishing acting from opera performers - the histrionic requirements of a huge hall and an exposing close-up are completely different. I have mixed feelings about the casting of Placido Domingo. Surely, in the mid-80s, it is beyond offensive to cast a boot-polished singer in the lead role, especially with so many great black performers more than qualified. I suppose they wouldn't have enabled the film to get made. On the other hand, Domingo is the greatest tenor of the 20th century, the most daring, versatile and exciting, as well as the one with most subtle and expressive dramatic range. He is remarkable here, his acting surprisingly nuanced and moving. In his first appearance, entering from the storm, and in his first beg scene, halting the drunken brawl, Otello is a figure who emerges from chaos to assert order; his decline into madness, pointed by the profusion of scientific, 'rational', instruments, which become expressions of distortion, is painful to watch, but true. Katia Ricciarelli, excellent, looks like she's wandered in from 'Siegfried'.

I am a fan of Placido Domingo in the sense that I admire him for his vast repertoire and lengthy career. That being said, this is one of the best movie versions of this opera around. Domingo is everything expected in this role. His superb singing and masculine physique are a perfect match. As for Katia's Desdemona, she is a great singer and beautiful woman (for an opera singer, of course). Justino Diaz's Iago is as evil and vile as Shakespeare wrote of him. The music along with actually shooting in Europe make a wonderfully complete picture for this masterpiece. Even the opening sequence is visual, unlike the usual staged productions. Real combat, emotion and staging are quite effective.

I don't understand Italian, singing or spoken, and I couldn't follow the subtitles. It might be great for opera fans, but it was all lost on me.

This is easily one of Franco Zeffirelli's better opera films. The cinematography is excellent, perfectly capturing the beautiful costumes and locations used here. A chief example of beauty was Desdemona lying on the bed all pure, as white as snow, as is said in the Shakespeare play. The subtitles are also very easy to read, and the plot while shortened is faithful to the play and to the opera's libretto. The music is just superlative. Verdi is without doubt up there with Puccini as the finest Italian opera composer, composing masterpieces such as La Traviata, Il Trovatore and Aida, and Otello based on Shakespeare's play deserves to be up there with them. So many highlights to choose from, there is Exultate, there are a couple of beautiful choruses and the riveting revenge duet between Otello and Iago, but my favourite has to be Desdemona's beautiful but haunting Willow Song(only in excerpt form here), that can give you goosebumps, because the repeated word Salce is quite hypnotic and foreboding. As for the singing, what can I say, fantastic. Placido Domingo was just brilliant, yes in the play, Othello is supposed to be black, I am trying to avoid being racist here, but Domingo is such a versatile talented singer, with a phenomenal voice, and a stage presence that does make Pavarotti inferior in comparison, it is forgiven. Katia Ricciarelli looked beautiful as the tragic Desdemona, and her voice was like an angel, in one word stunning. And Justino Diaz is very convincing as the hissable villain Iago, especially in the blasphemous but chilling Credo, who manipulates Otello into believing that Desdemona is unfaithful in quite an entertaining way. Overall, a very well done film adaptation of Verdi's opera. Bravo Zeffirelli! 10/10 Bethany Cox

A real rarity -- an opera on film that still retains its power. In fact, this version is even more powerful that some stage productions. The subtitles are easy to read, the staging is atmospheric, and the cast is wonderful.