Otello – review

There have been many distinguished revivals of Elijah Moshinsky's 1987 production of Verdi's Otello over the years, though few, I suspect, have been quite so engrossing as its latest incarnation. Moshinsky has painstakingly reworked the staging himself, and much of its force derives from a pair of remarkable performances by Aleksandrs Antonenko and Anja Harteros as Otello and Desdemona, both new to the cast.

Vocally, they're glorious. His burnished, sensual tone blends beautifully with her opulence and radiance, and at the start, they're completely credible as a couple so deeply in love they can hardly keep their hands off each other, even in public. It makes what follows all the more excruciating. Antonenko charts Otello's descent into violence with disturbing veracity: the speed with which thoughts of sexual betrayal corrode his mind is entirely convincing, even though Antonio Poli's dimwit Cassio is clearly no threat whatsoever. Harteros plays Desdemona as bewildered and compassionate yet tough, standing up to her husband's rages until they pass breaking point, fighting him – and still loving him – even on her deathbed.

The author of their destruction, meanwhile, is Lucio Gallo's Iago, a handsome psychopath with the sex lives of others constantly on his mind, and a dark, baleful voice that is nevertheless capable of the most seductive pianissimos. His Credo draws us into insidious complicity with him, and we're more conscious than on previous occasions of the rot in his marriage to Emilia (Hanna Hipp), some of which may be Moshinsky's doing. Antonio Pappano's conducting, meanwhile, is electric and eruptive throughout, yet wonderfully attentive to the needs of his singers, so that no one has to battle to be heard against the orchestra. Outstanding.