SALVINI'S OTHELLO.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4482, 31 July 1875, Page 2 (Supplement)

SALVINI'S OTHELLO.

(Communicated.) I have noticed in many colonial papers recently most enthusiastic accounts of the performance iu London of "Otliello," in Italian, by a certain Signer Salviui. I cannot say that I find in the boat Homo authorities complete confirmation of" these accounts. Thus, the Westminster Papers, a journal rather noticeable for critical acumen, says : " In treating of the Othello of Siguor Salviui wo are at once met by the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of criticising a gentleman who lias leapt at once to the highest point of popular favor. Fashion has taken up Siguor Salviui, fashion has decreed hi* performance! of the Moor to bo marvellous; he is talked about everywhere, and the newspapers, following the fashion, are full of Salviui and his admirers. We arc told that the authoress of 'Adamljcde' has been to soo him, as if the approval of a, novelist, however eminent, was final as to the excellence of an actor. Headers o£ The Times are startled one morning by an advertisement, a column in length, sotting forth that the various companies of the London theatres have requisitioned Salviui to give a morning performance for their benefit, and that the affoblo Italian has consented, presumably with the sanction of his manager. The name of Mr. Irviug is not in this list, and a contention arises as to its omission, only to be settled by a public letter from that gentleman. But though Mr. Irving's name was absent, tho ladies of the Alhambra and other burlesque establishments unanimously signed the requisition, and what can bo a greater proof of Salvini's attraction than the burning desire of these intellectual persons to see ' Otliello V The performance came off, and it is understood that tho profession attended iu large numbers ; it is ulso understood that admission was gratis. At the same time, there is no doubt that tho paying public is attracted. Fashionable people who have uover probably taken tho trouble to woo 'Othello' acted in their native language, rush to Drury Lane, and, influenced no doubt by the grandeur of tho play, as well as by Salvini's act"

ing, come away protesting that no Englishman is to bo named in the same breath with tho Italian. And there arc others, besides mere people of fashion, who will always give more favor to a foreigner than to an English actor, without regard to their merits. On the whole, then, we are disposed to think Salviui over-rated. His rendering of Othello is very good, but not so good, wo think, as that of Mr. Phelps ten years ago. But Mr. Phelps Was never a fashionable actor. The peculiar points of Salvini that have been so much praised arc caused by an Italian view of the part, and the question arises whether the traditions of the English school have been all wrong, and whether Shakspcre, who was an Englishman, is to be acted as if he wrote in Prench or German or Italian. Salviui's acting is southern and tropical. His arms and eyelids play a great part in the performance ; he dances on lago, flouts Emilia, is very rough with Desdemona, and cuts his own throat to a gurgling accompaniment. All this, though admirably suited to an Italian audience, does not strike us as being adapted to an English one ; aud yet, as we have hinted, it may account for tho extravagant praise of tho English, critics, always prejudiced against the land of their biith." Again, the Spectator, in conclusion of a lengthy notice of Signer Salviui's Othello, tells us :

" 111 strange contrast with the unfailing charm of his voice, is the repulsion which Siguor Salvini's couutenanuo inspires. We are persuaded that violent passions can only find adequate expression in violence, and we should have deeply disliked an operatic Othello ; but it is uot too much to say that Signer Salvjni is sometimes best appreciated with closed eyes. His bulky figure and his expressive face are impressive in his quieter moments, especially as he uses but little gesture iu the earlier scones, moves easily, and is not stagey in liia walk; but it needs distance to lend enchantment to his ever-rolling eyes and convulsed mouth, to the incessant muscular contortions of his face, and the leviathan-like hoavings of his big frame, after the stirrings of his fatal passion begin to make themselves felt. These expressions and movements are not forced, though they are exaggerated ; they have the broad freedom of an Italian rendering of all emotions, and they are perhaps never in excess of the effect of his truly wonderful voice ; but, unlike that voice, they do not convince and fascinate ; they shock and repel—that is, some of them, the most characteristic and significant, do so. When, in the terrible scene with lago, lie kneels, and swears, 'by yon marble heaven' to be true to his ' bloody thoughts,' there is something horrible in the stretched mouth and visible curled tongue, as he listens, panting, to lago's supplementary covenant of service; and the extreme violence of his gestures, the coarse loathing and coarse admiration of his expression in the letter-reading scene, while they make the blundering unconsciousness of Desdomona ridiculous, are singularly unpleasant to behold. AVe do not expect murder to be mild, but the gestures with which Signer Salvini threatens Desdomona, the curved, quivering fingers, the growl, the snatched breath, are more than human in the lower sense, and seem to us to invert Shakspere's intention, which was, we take it, to exhibit Othello wound up to the last pitch of stern, desperate resolution, to what he calls ' a sacrifice,'- —the wikhicss of passion passed into the fixity of doom. The Italian tragedian gives us not Shakspere's indictment, summing up, and sentence, with their awful drifts of pity and sweet remembrance, but a horrible scene of frantic objurgation, of hissing, shrieking, maniacal imprecation, and fierce physical violence. The dragging of the victim up the stage, the whirl through the curtains, the fall and horrid death-oroau beyond, are hateful to our mind ; and the latter is absurd, because the original text is adhered to iu respect of Desdemona's speaking again, her last sublime falsehood, uttered to Kmilia, which elicits from Othello that wonderful burst of fury and anguish yet uuquenched by revenge,— 'Slio's, like a liar, gono to burning hull!' llepulsivo, and in our opinion, false to art, as is the scene of the murder of Desdemoua, that of Othello's suicide is much moro repulsive, and a wider departure-, from,., artistic excellence, bad in conception, unpleasant to the point of disgust in execution, and destructive to one of the finest touches of pathos in the original, Othello's last words, as he falls by Desdemona's side. The varying and terrible emotions of the Moor all through the final scene are powerfully depicted, the actor's voice so commanding absorbed attention that the epileptic contortions of his face.are pardonable, until he snatches from his girdle the curved scimitar which replaces the ' sword of Spaiu, the ice-brook's temper,' of Shakspere's Othello, cuts his throat with it, with a sickening, hacking movement of the hand and the weapon, and falls back—not within the alcove, not near Desdemona —kicking and struggling in the agonies of death. A more horrid spectacle could not be exhibited, one more opposed to art and taste, or calculated more surely to efface the impression previously made by Signer Salvhii's undeniably lino performance."

I am aware that in repeating these criticisms I am transgressing a rule. It is the practice of too many writers amongst us of articles on the current dramatic events of the day, to snip out extracts without acknowledgment, to piece them together with half-a-dozen words of connection, and then to publish the whole as original " Dramatic Gossip." I have aii objection to doing this. Therefore, I simply quote, in their entirety, the passages which I desire to place before those who may be pleased to read what appears in this part of the present issue of a newspaper. HISTIUOJIASTIX.