Otello - Schedule, Program & Tickets
Otello
Dramma lirico in four acts; Libretto by Arrigo Boito after Shakespeare's tragedy OTHELLO, THE MOOR OF VENICE; Premiere on February 5, 1887 in Milan; Premiere at the Deutsche Oper Berlin on May 30, 2010
In Italian with German surtitles
about 3 hours / a break
Andreas Kriegenburg tells Verdi's OTELLO as a drama about the mortal shattering of a great love in a war-conditioned society. One of the greatest love stories of literature fails - as all the other great love stories of literature incidentally - brutal, cruel and pointless.
The black Venetian warlord Otello, a victorious type and upstart par excellence, husband of a wise and intrepid young woman of good family, becomes a raging murderer out of jealousy. When he realizes that he has been tricked into an intrigue, he also kills himself and, as he dying, wrestles his last passionate kisses from the dead body of the innocent lover. A love death? Verdi is not Wagner, and his optimism in the question of whether a common death can actually mean the complete fulfillment of all desired in unification life desires are legitimate doubts to announce. A thunderstorm of immense, metaphysical proportions overshadows the beginning of the work. It is an apocalyptic scenario that Verdi designs in the entrance to his opera, the compression of impending doom. An island full of people, far from home, surrounded by the roaring sea, which hardly gives hope to safely release the survivors of the campaign against the Turks. From a kind of choral "Dies irae" the voice of Jago stands out, which conjures up the misfortune, not as fear, but with comforting agreement. Despite his expectation, the war hero Otello emerges unscathed physically from the foaming masses of water.
The opposite of the apocalypse is the idea of love as a utopian alternative model. The prerequisites for the realization of this utopia seem to exist and release a tremendous amount of hope. Desdemona loves Otello, she has defied the convention and at the mercy of all obstacles free, defiant and sovereign for this man decided that she has followed in the distant Cyprus to live the common love in radical affirmation. But the dream of a relationship without restrictions fails. The size of this love is not visible in happiness, but in the painfulness of its break. A single, untroubled encounter is granted to the couple, who uses it to make sure each other remember their complementary motives for the connection.
Intrigue Jagos - set in motion with the arrival of Otello on Cyprus - is beginning to take effect. Masterful are the mechanisms of manipulation that he unleashes. He stages a puzzle of loose suspicions and tell-tale polaroids that Otello, once vaccinated with the virus of jealousy, effortlessly assembles into a horror scenario of love betrayal and loss of honor. A few targeted impulses by Jago set in motion an avalanche of self-dismantling, which unchecked to the dreadful end possible. The sincerity, innocence and impartiality of Desdemona and the greatness of the utopia of her love take on the form of a provocative grimace in this light, become the catalyst of an unscathed misfortune.
The causative agent is Iago, silent and cruel, iridescent in his wickedness, a perceptive human in any of his actions with an inscrutable goal, driven by a motivation whose origin must be greater than envy, envy and racism, and which ultimately remains in the dark. The soil on which his intrigue can flourish is that of a society at war. The war makes the man a man and destroys him immediately. The war hero brings deep happiness and a kind of intoxication of the existential on the threshold of death.
The up-and-coming Otello is a great warrior, a strategist with courage and a sense of responsibility, he seems to be invulnerable as a commander, whether in the fight against an enemy army or in existence against the forces of nature. His reflexes are trained and conditioned. Making quick decisions - if necessary against one's own interests - does not cause him any difficulties. Everywhere lurks the enemy, lurks the violence, the physical annihilation or - worse - the loss of honor.
What is vital in the war proves to be a hindrance in civilian life. Even engaging in a love affair requires a range of human possibilities that are sure to ruin the warrior. A change of these spheres overwhelmed. To show himself as a human makes Otello vulnerable. The experience of war and violence makes him doubt that trust can have its justification, dedication is possible and happiness is notjust an abstract utopia. Otello loses his bearings. Too big is the contrast and contradiction to the war and its consequences that still surround it. He must regard the perspective of happiness as a provocation, if not as a trap. He only regains his orientation and security when Jago makes him an irresistible offer: He places an enemy, the alleged destroyer of Otello's love idea, in his field of vision. Here the protagonist's deep emotional distrust reveals itself in the longed-for idea of peace and private happiness. The loss of control in the arms of the lover threatens him more than the relapse into the habitual patterns of the warrior. At this point, Iago sets the lever by pretending to Otello with the most primitive means a quasi-private war situation. In a near-Kafkaesque transformation, Desdemona's husband mutates into a berserker. The chain reaction of the human war machine takes its course.
Subject may change.
In Italian with German surtitles
about 3 hours / a break
Andreas Kriegenburg tells Verdi's OTELLO as a drama about the mortal shattering of a great love in a war-conditioned society. One of the greatest love stories of literature fails - as all the other great love stories of literature incidentally - brutal, cruel and pointless.
The black Venetian warlord Otello, a victorious type and upstart par excellence, husband of a wise and intrepid young woman of good family, becomes a raging murderer out of jealousy. When he realizes that he has been tricked into an intrigue, he also kills himself and, as he dying, wrestles his last passionate kisses from the dead body of the innocent lover. A love death? Verdi is not Wagner, and his optimism in the question of whether a common death can actually mean the complete fulfillment of all desired in unification life desires are legitimate doubts to announce. A thunderstorm of immense, metaphysical proportions overshadows the beginning of the work. It is an apocalyptic scenario that Verdi designs in the entrance to his opera, the compression of impending doom. An island full of people, far from home, surrounded by the roaring sea, which hardly gives hope to safely release the survivors of the campaign against the Turks. From a kind of choral "Dies irae" the voice of Jago stands out, which conjures up the misfortune, not as fear, but with comforting agreement. Despite his expectation, the war hero Otello emerges unscathed physically from the foaming masses of water.
The opposite of the apocalypse is the idea of love as a utopian alternative model. The prerequisites for the realization of this utopia seem to exist and release a tremendous amount of hope. Desdemona loves Otello, she has defied the convention and at the mercy of all obstacles free, defiant and sovereign for this man decided that she has followed in the distant Cyprus to live the common love in radical affirmation. But the dream of a relationship without restrictions fails. The size of this love is not visible in happiness, but in the painfulness of its break. A single, untroubled encounter is granted to the couple, who uses it to make sure each other remember their complementary motives for the connection.
Intrigue Jagos - set in motion with the arrival of Otello on Cyprus - is beginning to take effect. Masterful are the mechanisms of manipulation that he unleashes. He stages a puzzle of loose suspicions and tell-tale polaroids that Otello, once vaccinated with the virus of jealousy, effortlessly assembles into a horror scenario of love betrayal and loss of honor. A few targeted impulses by Jago set in motion an avalanche of self-dismantling, which unchecked to the dreadful end possible. The sincerity, innocence and impartiality of Desdemona and the greatness of the utopia of her love take on the form of a provocative grimace in this light, become the catalyst of an unscathed misfortune.
The causative agent is Iago, silent and cruel, iridescent in his wickedness, a perceptive human in any of his actions with an inscrutable goal, driven by a motivation whose origin must be greater than envy, envy and racism, and which ultimately remains in the dark. The soil on which his intrigue can flourish is that of a society at war. The war makes the man a man and destroys him immediately. The war hero brings deep happiness and a kind of intoxication of the existential on the threshold of death.
The up-and-coming Otello is a great warrior, a strategist with courage and a sense of responsibility, he seems to be invulnerable as a commander, whether in the fight against an enemy army or in existence against the forces of nature. His reflexes are trained and conditioned. Making quick decisions - if necessary against one's own interests - does not cause him any difficulties. Everywhere lurks the enemy, lurks the violence, the physical annihilation or - worse - the loss of honor.
What is vital in the war proves to be a hindrance in civilian life. Even engaging in a love affair requires a range of human possibilities that are sure to ruin the warrior. A change of these spheres overwhelmed. To show himself as a human makes Otello vulnerable. The experience of war and violence makes him doubt that trust can have its justification, dedication is possible and happiness is notjust an abstract utopia. Otello loses his bearings. Too big is the contrast and contradiction to the war and its consequences that still surround it. He must regard the perspective of happiness as a provocation, if not as a trap. He only regains his orientation and security when Jago makes him an irresistible offer: He places an enemy, the alleged destroyer of Otello's love idea, in his field of vision. Here the protagonist's deep emotional distrust reveals itself in the longed-for idea of peace and private happiness. The loss of control in the arms of the lover threatens him more than the relapse into the habitual patterns of the warrior. At this point, Iago sets the lever by pretending to Otello with the most primitive means a quasi-private war situation. In a near-Kafkaesque transformation, Desdemona's husband mutates into a berserker. The chain reaction of the human war machine takes its course.
Subject may change.
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