Verdi: Otello (complete opera recorded in 1938)
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GIUSEPPE VERDI
Verdi: Otello (complete opera recorded in 1938)
Giovanni Martinelli, Elizabeth Rethberg, Lawrence Tibbett / New York Metropolitan Opera Orchestra & Chorus, Ettore Panizza
[ Naxos Great Opera Performances / 2 CD ]
Release Date: Monday 27 June 2005
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With incandescent performances from the principal singers, orchestra and conductor, this February 1938 live broadcast of Verdi's Otello documents the interwar Metropolitan Opera at its peak. Giovanni Martinelli, for whom Otello became his signature legacy, portrays his rôle of lover, madman and penitent murderer so completely that each component authenticates the impact of the others. Lawrence Tibbett, the first and most complete in a line of distinguished American Verdi baritones, is as impressive for his insinuating mezza voce phrases as for the drinking-song. The German soprano Elisabeth Rethberg, a Met mainstay in both German and Italian rôles, was greatly admired for her purity of legato and tone.
"The conductor Panizza was Toscanini's deputy in earlier years, and something of the master's energy is felt, in company with more flexibility and willingness to accommodate his singers. In Act 1 especially he makes frightening demands upon orchestra and chorus who, it must be said, meet them dauntlessly.
Tibbett's Iago is superbly caught, the best account of the role on records…It is a mercurial portrayal, now genial, now ironic or insinuative, nakedly malignant. …his response to every phrase is specific and vivid; and his voice resonates richly." Gramophone
