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Otello
Cyrus Northrop Memorial Auditorium, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Thu, May 12, 1949
Otello (105)
Giuseppe Verdi | Arrigo Boito
- Otello
- Ramon Vinay
- Desdemona
- Licia Albanese
- Iago
- Leonard Warren
- Emilia
- Martha Lipton
- Cassio
- Leslie Chabay
- Lodovico
- Nicola Moscona
- Mont?no
- Clifford Harvuot
- Roderigo
- Thomas Hayward
- Herald
- Philip Kinsman
- Conductor
- Fritz Busch [Last performance]
Review 1:
Norman Houk in the Minneapolis Tribune
“Otello” Wins Praise as Tops in Singing
Verdi’s “Otello” Thursday night opened the Metropolitan Opera Company’s series of four performances in Northrop Auditorium. This was the one opera of those on the Minneapolis bill this season which stirred in advance the leasT enthusiasm. That was before.
The New York verdict – and the verdict from other cities on the current Met tour – was loudly sustained by the audience. That “Otello” is one of the Met’s tops in singing and dramatic power.
Verdi earned while young the reputation of being melodramatic and he never outgrew it, for this is the next to the last opera written by the octogenarian.
When a composer launches a show with a “climax,” in this case the first curtain parting tempest scene, you can be sure he has confidence in his power to whip up new heights of excitement.
Ramon Vinay gave a great characterization, histrionically and vocally, of Otello, the Moor tortured by the jealousy and suspicion planted by Iago. Leonard Warren sang the Iago role, getting a good hand on his Credo in the second act. Licia Albanese was an appealing Desdemona. This was after all three got off to a respectively uncertain, wobbly and chilly start. But it didn’t take them long to strike fire. Vinay and Warren had a remarkably strong scene together in the second act, and the act also had one of those Verdi quartets – as in “Rigoletto” –with four persons all singing at cross purposes together.
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