Another glorious space, the Academy of Music, hosts the larger productions that underpin Festival O, usually within smaller productions, once a year. This time it was “Otello”—not Verdi’s classic of his 1887, but Rossini’s much more unusual version of 1816, the opera Philadelphia to great credit for staging.
and beautiful staging. Rossini’s serious opera is serious work. Notoriously long and difficult for singers, it lacks a clear means for orchestras to show off. But the production, conducted with a steady energy by Corrado Lovaris, the company’s musical director, felt spacious and powerful.
The libretto’s differences from Verdi’s (and Shakespeare’s) are the lack of a particularly significant handkerchief and the importance Rossini places on Rodrigo’s character, who gets some of the most difficult music. His artistic adviser, tenor Lawrence Brownlee of Opera Philadelphia, took up this challenge. He has one of the sweetest sounds in the bel canto world, with a taut high note. He always prevailed, even if his tone sometimes paled in the fast passage work in Sunday’s final performance.
Rossini, as usual, features a number of leading tenors. Here the trio was filled in by Kaniso Gwenxarn, a voice as bold and outspoken as Otello, and Alec Schrader, who sounds new and powerfully alluded to like Iago.
In this version, Desdemona is a fully formed protagonist, something like Donizetti’s Lucia, with mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack giving the character nobility and eloquence, her voice dealing with coloratura and enjoying the text. flexible enough to She was in perfect harmony with mezzo-soprano Sun Lee Pearce, and as her maid Emilia, she had a voice that was a little lighter, less earthy, and more refined. We love to show off our combinations and reap the excitement from the slightest differences.)