Otello, Verdi's penultimate opera, was composed more than a dozen years after Aida, which he had intended to be his last work for the stage. He was persuaded by his publisher Giulio Ricordi to work with the librettist Arrigo Boito on an adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello; the resulting work is one of the supreme examples of Italian opera. Greeted with enormous enthusiasm at its premiere at La Scala in 1887, Otello immediately went on to huge success in all the major opera houses of the world. The richness of its musical and dramatic inventiveness is largely unmatched in Verdi's output, and its title role is perhaps the most demanding for the tenor in any Italian opera.This volume contains articles describing how Verdi was persuaded to write the opera and extracts from the extended correspondence between Verdi and Boito during the period of composition, as well as a detailed musical commentary and a historical survey of important productions and performers of the principal roles. The guide includes the full libretto with English translation, a discography, a bibliography, and DVD and website guides.Contains:The Moor of Venice, Milan and Sant'Agata, Avril BardoniOtello: Drama and Music, Benedict SarnakerOtello: A Selective Performance History, Hugo ShirleyOtello: Libretto by Arrigo Boito after the play Othello by William ShakespeareOtello: English translation by Avril Bardoni

Summarises what is currently known about Otello and interprets its significance within Verdi's career.

A comprehensive guide to Verdi's OTELLO, featuring Principal Characters in the opera, Brief Story Synopsis, Story Narrative with Music Highlight Examples, a complete, newly translated LIBRETTO with Italian/English translation side-by-side and music examples, selected Discography and Videography, Dictionary of Opera and Musical Terms, and an insightful and in depth Commentary and Analysis by Burton D. Fisher, noted opera author and lecturer.

A powerful performance text that illuminates incidents of anti-immigrant violence in contemporary Germany. Between 1998 and 2007 a series of killings in Germany, disdainfully styled "doner murders" by the media, were attributed by German police to internecine rivalries among immigrants. The victims included eight citizens of Turkish origin, a Greek citizen, and a German policewoman. Not until 2011 did the German public learn not only that the police had ignored signs pointing to the real perpetrators, a neo-Nazi group called the National Socialist Underground, but also that important files, possibly containing evidence implicating state agencies, had disappeared from the archives of Federal Police and intelligence organizations. Esther Dischereit, one of the preeminent German-Jewish voices of the post-Holocaust generation, takes that failure of the state to protect its citizens from racist violence as the core of her performance text Flowers for Otello: On the Crimes That Came Out of Jena. Seeking an appropriate language with which to meet the bereaved, she also finds a way to raise the blanket of silence that is used by those who would prefer that we forget. Combining witness testimony, myth, and incidents from a history of violence against minorities, Flowers for Otello, in Iain Galbraith's translation, refuses chaos, instead revealing the chilling, patterned order of tragedy, while bringing a great writer's humanism to the fore.

Filmmakers' fascination with opera dates back to the silent era but it was not until the late 1980s that critical enquiries into the intersection of opera and cinema began to emerge. Jeongwon Joe focusses primarily on the role of opera as soundtrack by exploring the distinct effects opera produces in film, effects which differ from other types of soundtrack music, such as jazz or symphony. These effects are examined from three perspectives: peculiar qualities of the operatic voice; various properties commonly associated with opera, such as excess, otherness or death; and multifaceted tensions between opera and cinema - for instance, opera as live, embodied, high art and cinema as technologically mediated, popular entertainment. Joe argues that when opera excerpts are employed on soundtracks they tend to appear at critical moments of the film, usually associated with the protagonists, and the author explores why it is opera, not symphony or jazz, that accompanies poignant scenes like these. Joe's film analysis focuses on the time period of the post-1970s, which is distinguished by an increase of opera excerpts on soundtracks to blockbuster titles, the commercial recognition of which promoted the production of numerous opera soundtrack CDs in the following years. Joe incorporates an empirical methodology by examining primary sources such as production files, cue-sheets and unpublished interviews with film directors and composers to enhance the traditional hermeneutic approach. The films analysed in her book include Woody Allen’s Match Point, David Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly, and Wong Kar-wai’s 2046.

A guide to the often misunderstood musical form offers readers an irreverant tour of the opera world and the music it supports.