Rossini's Otello, premiered in Naples in 1816, is an opera with a notorious reputation: the libretto is a grotesque distortion of Shakespeare; the opera is twaddle when put beside Verdi's much later version; and it requires no fewer than three star tenors (plus the best soprano you can find), all of whom have to sing some of the most impossibly gruelling music ever written.
The revelation of the Royal Opera's new production, however, is that most of the charges flung at the opera are erroneous. Shakespeare is not so much travestied as cogently distilled along neoclassical lines - aptly so for a composer who, though regarded as a Romantic, was largely drawn to the theatre of Voltaire and Racine. As for the three tenors, Covent Garden has unquestionably found them - and boy can they sing.
Glamorisation of the tenor voice was what both Verdi and Rossini were about when it came to giving the Moor of Venice musical flesh, but where Verdi demands clarion lung power, Rossini lets his Otello seduce, enchant and rave over the fearsome extreme of two-and-a-half octaves. Bruce Ford negotiates this terrifying range with consummate ease and minimal showiness, underpinning his vocalism with a sense of volcanic emotion.
It's a strong performance, but he's not ultimately the star of the show. Pride of place goes to the Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Florez. He's cast as Rodrigo, a conflation of Cassio and his Shakespearian namesake. Rossini endows the object of Otello's jealously with a vocal allure and prowess that exceed his own. The tessitura is implacably high, the coloratura treacherous. Florez spins it out with a staggering perfection of tone. A very great tenor has finally arrived. Octavio Arevalo's Iago completes the triumvirate. His music is less florid, its punchy simplicity an apt catalyst for his victims' spectacular emotionalism. Arevalo is impressive, reedily serpentine, a nasty piece of work.
Hearing this trio in action is imperative, but you have to put up with inequalities elsewhere. Mariella Devia's Desdemona isn't in their league. A once great bel canto singer, she's now past her best. Her phrasing remains unfailingly sensitive, but the tone is acidic. An ill-judged, interpolated top note in the act two finale was a horrid shriek, as if someone had put electrodes on her. The conductor, Gianluigo Gelmetti, is elegantly refined, but rarely intense enough. The production, by Pier Luigi Pizzi, badly misjudges the piece. Rossini keeps the action in Venice throughout, though the libretto, incorporating quotes from Dante, aligns the city's concentric canals with the circles of the Inferno and reminds us that this is a drama of lost souls played out on the brink of an abyss. Venice and Hell are both conspicuous by their absence, however. All we get is a series of insipid tableaux vivants against a backdrop of monotonous grey colonnades. Rossini - and those three glorious tenors - deserve something better.
Until February 17. Box office: 0171-304 4000
