With any recording, but especially one of massed forces, whose soft-to-loud span will be predictably broad, my practice is to set the volume at a level that will contain the climaxes just below the pain threshold, and hope for the best. For Otello, that’s easy, because the opening storm scene is as loud as anything in the opera. And though it is always exciting, my impression here was that the Santa Cecilia orchestra of 2019 is improved over that of 1954, and that Pappano is an upgrade over Alberto Erede, conductor of that first Tebaldi/Del Monaco Otello. So although a few choral lines don’t have quite the presence I’d like (e. g., the pp at”Spasima l’universa“—partly a matter of sheer softness, partly of an absence of suspenseful inflection), things are OK on the dynamics front (though not on the spatial one) up through the “Esultate!” and the beginning of the “Vittoria!” chorus. But then we get into the pp staccati alternating with ff outcries, where I become aware of a pattern of the pianissimi losing too much of their theatrical spark in their search for delicacy, and the story of the passage becoming intermittent. And then the moment arrives of the ppp, morendo “Si calma la bufera,” the end of the chorus and the set-up for the Iago/Roderigo dialogue. The moment, but not the line—I can’t hear it at all. I know it has to be there, but no, it isn’t.

Could it be me? I’m not young, and these tradeoffs of extreme louds and softs . . . ? My home remedy is to turn to other recordings of the same passage and set the volume by the same rule. No fair picking an old monophonic broadcast version, like Toscanini’s, where the dynamic range is perforce compressed and the acoustic not very favorable to start with, or a live one, where so many other factors can influence. They must be “expanded studio” recordings, in stereo, of modern frequency and dynamic range. I chose two top-of-the-line efforts, one conducted by Tullio Serafin with the Rome Opera Orchestra for RCA Victor, the other by Herbert von Karajan with the Vienna Philharmonic for Decca/London. Serafin’s was recorded in the Costanzi itself, Karajan’s in the Sofiensaal, both auditoriums especially configured for opera recording. Both were released in the same month in 1960, in direct competition with each other. I listened to them in their original LP form (surfaces still good!); thus, pure analogue. In addition to the opening scene, I listened to the Act 3 concertato finale, wherein there are many possibilities for bringing to the fore details of seeming importance we cannot detect in the theatre, most of which should be resisted.

These two Otello recordings of course have their differences, determined by the acoustics of their halls, the prevailing timbres of their orchestras, the predilections of their conductors and producers, and so on. But: in both, notwithstanding any highlighting and isolating (nothing new there), we hear the forces of the performances, whether massed or broken down into units of one or two individual voices or instruments, embraced by a common space. The space resounds and voices and instruments occupy it; we hear the air around them. The music ranges as far across the dynamic spectrum as anyone could wish, but never loses touch. “Si calma la bufera” is hushed, as intended, but decidedly there, and beautiful. We have an opera.