To hear colors, materials, and geometric shapes like these in Verdi’s music is to suggest a fairly serious eye/ear dissociation, shared in this instance by designer and director. We do have to keep in mind that this dissociation may be fully advised, for one article of the postmodern covenant mandates the separation, or even the opposition, of performance elements. (See the posts of Sept. 7 and 2l, 2018, “Brecht/Weill”; also, the chapters of Opera as Opera entitled “Bob Does Dick” and “Down the Post Road.”) To adherents of that creed, the less the sets of Otello have to do with the music of Otello—the more, indeed, they disregard or negate it—and the more they distract us from investment in Otello‘s story and characters, the better. They truly mean this, and state it openly. So there is every reason to suppose that Devlin is not just an inadequate, confused lover of Verdi and Boito, but in fact their active enemy.^(I)

The place where the Otello of Dec.17 went definitively off the track was the Act II quartet. That’s where Dudamel seemed to lose whatever grip he had on the proceedings. But it also may have been where he looked up at the stage and wondered, as did I, what the event of this scene was supposed to be, and what sort of musical definition he was supposed to be providing for it. To refresh: in a hall that opens at the back onto the garden wherein Desdemona has just received the tributes of the populace, she, puzzled by Otello’s angry rejection of the handkerchief she has offered for his burning temples, pleads with him to accept her assurances of love; he, wrestling with the first suspicions of infidelity, soliloquizes on his ignorance of love’s subtle deceptions (the kind these sophisticated Venetians would be practicing), on his age, and on the color of his skin (see below). Meanwhile Emilia, having retrieved the handkerchief, has withdrawn from their troubled conversation. Now, at a discreet distance but in the same room, Iago at first demands, then violently seizes the handkerchief from her. The conductor’s task is to be sure that certain moments, certain words, are in the clear while the overall texture goes on its disturbed way, rising and falling as it goes. The director’s is to stage the relationships with regard to these same necessities. Musically, this sequence is unlike the Rigoletto quartet, which also comprises two separate conversations that converge at a dramatic turning-point. It isn’t a number, but an episode in a through-composed dramatic arc, and has no dominant melodic components to set pace and tone. Theatrically, it also hasn’t the convenience of outdoor/indoor division that allows the Rigoletto duologues to proceed independently. Here, the couples are trapped together in the hall, yet must pursue their separate quarrels. This both heightens the pressure of the dramatic situation and challenges the director to keep it all clear and credible, for if Otello can see Iago obtain the handkerchief, or if we don’t believe he can avoid seeing it, we can all go home. It’s called suspense.