supercheesegirl

Sunday was our first opera of the season: Verdi's Otello. Now, I will admit that I have never seen or read Shakespeare's Othello, so maybe I'm missing something. However, I kind of feel like an opera should tell me a satisfying story regardless of whether I'm familiar with the source material. This was... not our favorite opera by a longshot. The action focused on Iago, Otello, and Desdemona to the detriment of the other characters--Roderigo only showed up twice I think, and Cassio wasn't as interesting as everyone made him out to be. Desdemona just seemed like a moron--I mean, really, you mention Cassio and your husband gets a headache, you mention him again and he freaks out, you keep at it and he starts calling you a whore--come on, woman, get a clue! At one point Desdemona's like "Oh, CASSIO..." and the entire audience started to laugh. It was that ridiculous. And this is, and I quote from the program, "considered to be Verdi's greatest masterpiece"?

I need to get to bed, but overall: sets were absolutely gorgeous, singing was good, Iago was awesome (and actually reminded me of Carlos a little bit), but the writing was poor. We were not all about it.