Evaluate the effectiveness of Verdi in completing the transformation of literature into music

Evaluate the effectiveness of Verdi in completing the transformation of literature into music

The composition of Otello was a much less Shakespearean feat; for the truth is that, instead of Otello being an Italian opera written in the style of Shakespeare, Othello is a play written by Shakespeare in the style of Italian opera. It is quite peculiar among his works in this aspect. Its characters are monsters: Desdemona is a prima donna, with handkerchief, confidante, and vocal solo, all complete; and Iago, though slightly more anthropomorphic than the Count di Luna, is only so when he slips out of his stage villain's part. (Rothstein, 2010) Othello's transports are conveyed by a magnificent but senseless music which rages from the Propontick to the Hellespont in an orgy of thundering sound and bounding rhythm; and the plot is a pure farce plot: that is to say, it is supported on an artificially manufactured and desperately precarious trick which a chance word might upset at any moment. With such a libretto, Verdi was quite at home: his success with it proves, not that he could occupy Shakespeare's plane, but that Shakespeare could on occasion occupy his, which is a very different matter. Shaw on Verdi (1901), even at such length, is irresistible. He is also at least partly irresponsible. He was promoting Wagner by putting down Verdi, and G. B. Shaw by putting down Shakespeare. A substantial portion of his reputation is based on such clever and outrageous half-truths. (Tambling, 2008)

Of course, Verdi's opera is not Shakespeare's play, any more than Shakespeare's play is Giraldi Cinthio's story. In fact (although I am about to do it myself), I find it tiresome that people keep writing more and more words about the enigmatic Englishman's play when they pretend to be writing about Verdi's opera.

My guess is that several thousand words have been written about Othello -with-an-H for every one devoted to Otello . Shakespeare's 283-year head start has a lot to do with this—and the fact that words seem to be better suited to the analysis of structures made out of other words than to those made out of musical notes. Verse

But beyond that, apart from musical analysis, Boito/Verdi seem to have left the critic who wants to comment on something more than particular singers, conductors, and sets relatively little to talk about. They so strip-mined and refined their original that most of the endlessly fascinating questions Shakespeare's 25,000-plus words give rise to simply don't exist for the reader or analyst of the 6,500-word libretto (not counting repeats) that Boito writes and Verdi sets to music. (Pratt, 2009)

When Othello lost his H, Iago became Jago, and Desdemona began accenting the second syllable of her name, all three changed utterly. They awoke, in fact, in a totally different world: different because it was made out of music; because it was operatic; because it was Italian; because it was, in imaginative terms, Boitan and Verdian; and because it was a world conceived and brought to ...