Otello

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 417, 20 June 1947, Page 10

Otello

[DRAMA and spectacle both have a very important part to play in the art of opera. When we consider how much more vivid and compelling even an orchestral performance seems when it is seen as well as heard, it is obvious that the broadcast opera is at a grave disadvantage. But since the dramatic elements of an opera are inexorably entwined with the musical elements we cannot disregard them entirely and let the performance stand’ on its musical merits alone, especially as the language of opera is seldom comprehensible to that V.LP., the Average Listener. So we are forced to sacrifice musical continuity to dramatic comprehension, which means that at the end of every number an announcer (not even standing in the wings!) must make some comment like "The curtain is now rising on the Fourth Act. All is quiet, when suddenly Phillippo appears back centre clutching a bloody dagger which he points menacingly at Matilda. She sings the aria ‘Seek Me No More.’ ... ." Sunday night’s Otello was, however, a happier-than-usual experience for the operastayer, for in Otello Verdi is at his most effective, his music transcribing in another medium all the convincing extravagance of this story of loving and hating not wigely but too well. But perhaps the chief contributor to the success of the broadcast was not Shakespeare, not Verdi, but 2YA’s announcer. It is customary for the opera commentator to throw his comments into the pool of silence created for them either with an apologetic " You-know-what-these-libret-tists-are" attitude, or with Olympian detachment. Sunday night is the first time I have heard an opera announcer show almost as much interest in what’s going on around him as Winston McCarthy.