Otello is a 153-minute studio album of Gioachino Rossini's opera Otello, performed by José Carreras, Nucci Condò, Salvatore Fisichella, Alfonso Leoz, Keith Lewis, Gianfranco Pastine, Samuel Ramey and Frederica von Stade with the Ambrosian Chorus and the Philharmonia Orchestra under the direction of Jesús López Cobos. It was released in 1979.
Background
Following Otellos première in Naples in 1816, Rossini wrote an alternative version of the opera which replaced its climax with a different, happier conclusion. (Opera Rara's issue of the opera, conducted by David Parry, includes this alternative ending in an appendix.) Jesús López Cobos's album presents the opera in accordance with Rossini's original autograph score.
The album was the first studio recording of the opera ever undertaken.
Recording
The album was recorded using analogue technology in September 1978 at an unidentified location in London.
Packaging
The cover of the CD edition of the album, designed under the art direction of Ton Friesen, features a photograph by Hans Morren.
Critical reception
Reviews
Alan Blyth reviewed the album on LP in Gramophone in September 1979. Recalling how Stendhal had rhapsodized over the opera, he expressed regret that it had fallen into a degree of obscurity. Berio's libretto, it was true, was a travesty of Shakespeare, but Rossini's alchemy had turned its lead into gold. The work was "full of music that [was] mellifluous and affecting", and though it was not the last word in psychological profundity, in between its occasional barren pages there were others that plumbed genuine depths of feeling. Indeed, there were moments in which Rossini had rivalled, or maybe surpassed, what Giuseppe Verdi had done with the story seven decades later. But whatever one thought of Rossini's score, there was no doubting that López Cobos's album could hardly have put the case for it more persuasively. As Desdemona, Frederica von Stade exhibited her "accustomed control and feeling for the shape of a phrase", singing even more beautifully than she had in the excerpt from the opera that she had included in her early recital disc of bel canto arias. Her one failing was that her diction left something to be desired. She showed an "increasing tendency to smooth away consonants in the interests of suave tone", and her recitatives suffered accordingly. As Emilia, Nucci Condò sang with a voice so like von Stade's that it was sometimes difficult to tell the maidservant from her mistress, though the similarity of their timbres made for an exquisite blending in their Act 1 duet. (Stendhal, Blyth noted, had thought the duet the best thing in the entire score.) In the opera's title role, José Carreras made "as much as he [could] of a part that [offered] little in the way of pathos". He was equally credible as a proud soldier, a tormented lover and a man agonizing on the brink of becoming a murderer. Salvatore Fisichella brought an astonishing virtuosity to the opera's most demanding role, Rodrigo. With his "pleasingly clean, open tone and rapid vibrato", he negotiated his character's roulades, coloratura and excruciating tessitura with virtually no apparent effort. The opera's third tenor, Gianfranco Pastine, did well, too, as Iago - a smaller part than in Verdi or Shakespeare - and sang with a timbre that was different enough from Carreras's or Fisichella's to obviate confusion. Samuel Ramey was effective as Desdemona's irate father, and Alfonso Leoz was a poetic Gondolier in his brief offstage contribution to Desdemona's Willow Song scene. The orchestra played attentively, and López Cobos conducted with great skill, emphasizing the moments when Rossini was at his most inspired and making it easy to overlook passages in which the composer's powers of fantasy had faltered. The audio quality of the album was excellent, with the singers and instrumentalists balanced judiciously and projected clearly. In sum, Philips's recording was "an issue that should be in all operatic collections worthy of the name."