The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare estimates that at least three hundred operas were based on the works of William Shakespeare. For a librettist to be inspired by Shakespeare was not unusual in the 19th century. Seventy years before Verdi’s late masterpiece, Rossini had already scored Otello (1816). Other notable adaptations of the Bard’s work include Tchaikovsky’s third version of the fantasy overture for Romeo and Juliet (1880) and Mendelssohn’s Incidental Music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1842).

Like many of his contemporaries, Verdi was deeply inspired by Shakespeare. Yet unlike his contemporaries, he had the wherewithal to resist his impulses. He had considered setting music to King Lear, and planned to set music to The Tempest, Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet. None of these were ever made. Even with Macbeth, he did as he pleased. In his enthusiasm he rewrote, and even added entire passages, notably in the third Act. This was less of an adaptation and more of a choice selection of the most dramatic moments.

It would take Verdi forty years of maturation, and a new collaborator (Boito) to return to the Bard. His late adaptations of Othello and Falstaff are now widely recognized as being among his best and most surprising works. While he neither spoke nor read any English, Verdi had a scholar’s enthusiasm for minutest differences between the many Italian translations. Still, this did not stop him from casually scrapping the first eighty-six lines of Othello, and instead beginning instead with Otello’s arrival on the shores of Cyprus.

Keith Warner’s 2017 production at London’s Royal Opera House, now revived, takes us beyond these shores into the darkest corners of Otello’s tower. Gregory Kunde sings the titular role of Otello. He steps into Jonas Kaufmann’s shoes. No easy task. But Kunde has become a familiar face at the ROH, performing three times in as many years since his 2016 debut. And he can clearly hold his own.

If anything, Kunde’s entry as Otello is perhaps too bombastic, as it means he has to sustain this level of intensity. This renders Verdi’s sympathetic depiction of Otello’s downward spiral somewhat moot. Instead of a great hero who is slowly undone, we have here an Otello already seething with aggressive energy from the get-go. 

Rather than using the warmth of the D-Flat major to signal the end of the war, one feels the opposite. It is as if Otello has brought the war back with him. In Kunde’s Otello, one senses a hint of post-traumatic stress disorder. He almost too willingly embraces Iago’s suggestion that the killing need not yet cease.

In contrast, Desdemona, sung by Ermonela Jaho, paints her love in miniature. Hers is the love of someone accustomed to being alone. She pines rather than loves. And her musical interpretation slightly diminishes the high notes, suggesting her character’s unfamiliarity with full rapture. It is a longing for longing. And she sings with the docility of someone unsure whether her love will be reciprocated.

The famous ‘Willow Song’ is usually considered a premonition of violence to come. But here it is almost as if, alone for the first time since her husband’s return, Desdemona comforts herself with a song recollected from childhood. Otello’s approaching footsteps, booming like John William’s cinematic score for the approaching T-Rex in Jurassic Park, are here once again like the intrusion of a violent reality into the idyllic world of fantastical expectations.

Carlos Alvarez, in the role of Iago, is depicted as a master of disinformation. He is no longer mischievous, but nihilistic. As if in his actions he wishes to prove himself wrong, that there is indeed something worth saving in humanity. When he realizes the ease with which his victims are misled, he lends a certain wistfulness to the famous lines ‘Credo in un Dio crudel’. Rather than rejoicing in his evil, he is like a cat grown tired tormenting his prey.

The staging is familiar yet timeless, a dark take on art deco. Dark slabs of concrete and marble. Boris Kudlicka’s set design is simultaneously cavernous and monolithic, lit in rich red and looming shadows by Bruno Poet. The sliding panels, moving walls, and rolling statues are both used to suggest an inner world in turmoil, and the great weight of the stately halls, with the suggestion that the institution could easily crush anyone under its weight without so much as noticing it. Some eye-catching, yet heavy-handed flourishes have been added to the revival. A giant lion is broken to pieces, and political slogans are spray-painted onto the walls of the castle.

Verdi and Shakespeare’s Otello form an artistic enigma: a dyad of timeless masterpieces. We can appreciate the play and the opera on equal terms. Otello has always seemed to me like a true continuation of the themes explored in Shakespeare’s play. The music of the storm besieging Otello upon his arrival becomes the inner storm of his turmoil. And the repressed longing of Desdemona hums with the tension of her alternating high and low notes. When she blames herself for the violence done against her, we feel the emotional dead-end that her own love has led her into.

In this ROH revival we have a performance that stands entirely on its own artistic accomplishments. Of course there will be those who prefer Shakespeare's original version. Verdi’s mature skill allows little room for interpretation, which can lead to monochromatic performances. In the British festive season it is always easy to suspect hints of pantomime. Whether it’s Iago’s villainy, or Cassio’s (Freddi De Tommaso) drunken revelry. But the overwhelming sense is that of Verdi’s own risk-taking, in embracing his Shakespearian influences and foregoing Italian nationalism and hummable choruses. Instead, there is the emotional depth sufficient to match the source material. And the ROH orchestra under the baton of Antonio Pappano proves again that it can perform Verdi with all the precision and bombast befitting the Italian master’s penultimate score.