The Staatsoper presents Jonas Kaufmann’s Otello in Adrian Noble’s production. A theatrical Otello, all restraint, subtle, extremely strong, perfectly calibrated — and that may also be its limit.
Wiener Staatsoper – Thursday 29 October 2026
Orchestra and chorus of the Wiener Staatsoper
Conductor: Bertrand de Billy
Director: Adrian Noble
Giuseppe Verdi, Otello, dramma lirico in four acts
« Instead of Otello being an Italian opera written in the style of Shakespeare, Othello is a play written by Shakespeare in the style of Italian opera. » George Bernard Shaw
We are transfixed from the very first bar. We all know that opening in medias res, the storm at full height, fortissimo, the spray thrown into the faces of a stunned audience. The curtain falls like a sail. We live through the tempest. Basil Twist’s stage effects combine shadow, abstraction and play of light. The lightning is there, the ship is suggested. The remarkable chorus is unleashed at full power under the nervous, precise direction of Bertrand de Billy. And after such a wave of sound comes the famous « Esultate ».
The long-awaited star is of course Jonas Kaufmann in the title role. Let us recall that Verdi wrote the part for Francesco Tamagno, a tenor with a clarion voice. Then came a whole lineage of Otellos with conquering timbre. Del Monaco, Vickers, Domingo. And Jonas Kaufmann surprises by his lack of projection. The orchestra very nearly covers him. One struggles to recognise the Otellos of the repertoire who asserted themselves as victorious, triumphant generals. Was Kaufmann saving himself for what was to come? No, it is a choice. Since Covent Garden in 2017 and Munich in 2018, Kaufmann has been building an Otello of pure restraint, intellectual, broken. Nicole Car, an extraordinary Desdemona, said as much in the interview she gave us: Kaufmann « is always in his head ». And so we are given a subtle « Esultate ». Subtlety, beneath the canvas, beneath the sail, is the watchword of this entire performance.
And that subtlety is carried first of all by Iago. Luca Salsi, a baritone trained in Parma, an immense Verdian who will in fact sing Iago at the opening of the Scala season on 7 December, is a great Iago. It is worth recalling that Otello was to have been called Iago throughout the composition phase. Only in 1886 did Verdi settle on keeping the Shakespearean title. The Brindisi, « Inaffia l’ugola », the opera’s only closed number, is a delight. A perfectly controlled line that descends into the low register, then leaps up to a high A. After the sail, the waves. Cassio gets drunker with every reprise. One thinks of the « Golden Calf » in Faust. All the character’s malignity is there. One thinks too of Berlioz, of the drinkers’ chorus and Mephistopheles’ song in La Damnation de Faust. And Boito, the librettist, is the author of a Mefistofele of 1868. Yes, his Iago is tonight a brother to Mephisto. The orchestra accompanying this anthology Iago is by turns mocking, sovereign and pliant, in a quicksilver reading that only strengthens this most Mephistophelean passage. Salsi seduces rather than grimaces.
Facing the demon, there is the couple. Desdemona appears: it is the cello. Then the harps. In « Già nella notte densa », Otello embraces withdrawal. In « Mio superbo guerrier », Nicole Car asserts herself with great smoothness, on a very pure vocal line. A duet of sheer wonder, finely drawn, crystalline. The chemistry between Kaufmann and Car works. And together they give us a lesson in singing. Nicole Car shows what she has learned from French song: Thaïs, Hérodiade, Massenet. Kaufmann has the suppleness of lieder, the pianissimi, the subtlety. The kiss motif that returns at Otello’s death is of the greatest beauty.
In Act II comes the poison, a theatrical act. Iago’s Credo is terrifying. It is not Shakespearean. Boito invented it outright. Yet Verdi found it Shakespearean through and through, as he wrote in a letter of 3 May 1884. Through abrupt leaps, chromaticism and a declaimed line, it chills us with its nihilistic profession of faith. When he sings « La morte è il nulla » — death is nothingness — the listener contemplates his own finitude. Salsi’s Iago is always in serpentine insinuation. The dream narrative, « Era la notte, Cassio dormia », sung in half-voice over rarefied strings; the warning « È un’idra fosca », jealousy, the dark hydra. Then comes the handkerchief quartet, and it must be said that while the other characters are all vocally coherent, what stays with us above all is the leading trio: Kaufmann, Salsi, Car. The conducting never stops surprising by its subtlety. Mandolin, guitar, lyre. The act also offers fresh and charming tableaux, notably the children’s chorus. This is a whispered Otello. And then the oath, « Sì, pel ciel marmoreo giuro! ». Perhaps we might have wished for something to break loose, for Kaufmann’s intellectualisation to give way at times to passion.
Act III is perhaps the evening’s only real weakness, if weakness there is. The coppery sets accord with the demonic aspect of the character. The monologue « Dio! mi potevi scagliar » begins in a spent voice and ends fortissimo. Desdemona, Nicole Car, is superb. She truly leads the ensemble. For jealousy is slow to become fever.
But everything had necessarily to lead to Act IV. A model of singing. The cor anglais prelude and the great set piece, the Willow Song. Almost a Mahler lied. Because Desdemona has it here from Barbara, her mother’s maid. The « Salce, salce, salce » resounds like the Knaben Wunderhorn songs. It is a naïve song, broken by anguish, a chamber writing that anticipates the Kindertotenlieder. Verdi announces, he does not borrow. His Otello dates from 1887, but Mahler would conduct this house from 1897 to 1907. Desdemona, like a Cleopatra, surrounded by candles, dressed all in white. And almost at once we are in the Puccinian world. The intimacy of the bedchamber, the heroine dying in an enclosed space, a kind of Death of Sardanapalus in reverse, a song that comes close to murmured speech over the orchestra’s melody. Manon Lescaut arrives in 1893. Sensitivity, intelligence, poise, impeccable line. Nicole Car’s Ave Maria, on a rising scale, is the counterpart to Iago’s Credo, in the minor and on a descending scale.
The staging throughout is discreet and effective. It puts the singing and the orchestra forward. Adrian Noble, let us recall, ran the Royal Shakespeare Company between 1990 and 2003. He is a man of Shakespearean theatre who knows everything the spoken word can hold of drama, everything the empty space Peter Brook spoke of can bring to dramaturgy. The action is transposed to the early twentieth century, against a colonial background. This is indeed an Otello for the theatre. The theatre is in the score. The theatre is in the libretto. And the staging brings forward the libretto, the words, the dramatic construction, and lets them speak. The Staatsoper orchestra offers moments of pure grace. Bertrand de Billy, a faithful companion of the house, will conduct the new Damnation de Faust by Berlioz this season. He will be in his element.
Kaufmann is at the height of his art, all restraint, all subtlety. He gives us an intelligent, tormented Otello. Nicole Car is touching, feminine, credible. The evening is of course a triumph. Perhaps what it lacked was a moment of madness. Moments where one might sometimes give passion its head rather than mastery. As in the Act II oath, or the farewell to glory, « A terra!… e piangi! » in Act III. It is a performer’s choice; it has its beauty and its coherence. And we can only salute the very high artistic quality, the homogeneity of the cast and the musical excellence of this Viennese Otello.
Performance details
Giuseppe Verdi, Otello, dramma lirico in four acts, libretto by Arrigo Boito after Shakespeare.
Wiener Staatsoper, Thursday 29 October 2026.
Conductor: Bertrand de Billy. Director: Adrian Noble. Sets and costumes: Dick Bird. Lighting: Jean Kalman. Stage effects: Basil Twist. Fight director: Malcolm Ranson.
Otello: Jonas Kaufmann. Desdemona: Nicole Car. Jago: Luca Salsi. Cassio: Botond Ódor. Roderigo: Carlos Osuna. Lodovico: Dan Paul Dumitrescu. Montano: Leonardo Neiva. A herald: Ion Ţibrea. Emilia: Daria Sushkova. Bianca: Katharina Billerhart.
Orchestra and chorus of the Wiener Staatsoper.
Photos: © Wiener Staatsoper / Marcel Urlaub
Read also: NABUCCO AT THE GRAND THÉÂTRE DE GENÈVE / VERDI / JATAHY / FOGLIANI · VICTORIA HALL / ORCHESTRE DE LA SUISSE ROMANDE / MYUNG-WHUN CHUNG / VERDI REQUIEM
