Here are the caveats: The picture is really murky; there are subtitles in Japanese that you can’t turn off (you can add English, German, Spanish, or Italian, which appear over the Japanese in a different, clear color); the sets are mostly painted flats and very primitive ones at that (at least what you can see of them); Alberto Erede’s conducting is workmanlike at best, the chorus is under-rehearsed and sloppy, and the acting for the most part is hand-to-heart; the video portion of “Ora e per sempre, addio” is missing (stills from the performance fill in the two minutes of the lost visuals while we hear the music–no big deal); and Gabriella Tucci, who sings Desdemona, wears the dumbest-looking wig imaginable.
Then why bother? Well, not only is this a fascinating artifact of a period that began in the mid-1950s when Italian opera began traveling to Japan (the Japanese apparently paid outrageously high ticket prices and fees for the artists), it is also, on some levels, a thrilling, important performance. Mario del Monaco was the Otello before Vickers and Domingo; it was the role he sang more than any other, and despite his lack of subtlety as an artist, he was remarkably well-suited to it. His huge, ringing, secure, trumpet-like tenor was produced fearlessly, and particularly at this stage of his career (1959) there was nothing his voice couldn’t do including express sensitivity, which he does far too infrequently. He also cut a dashing figure onstage and knew how to play to the gallery. His Otello may not have the textual subtleties of either Vickers’ or Domingo’s, but it packs a wallop.
The other, perhaps even more pressing reason to see this video is the Iago of Tito Gobbi. One of the greatest singing actors of the 20th century, here in his prime, his voice still not the juiciest of instruments, Gobbi gives a truly outstanding performance–snide, understated, with an audible sneer–even when asked to do things like pretend to play a mandolin during the first-act Drinking Song. He more than stands up to the larger-than-life Otello of del Monaco.
Gabriella Tucci, costuming notwithstanding, is a lovely Desdemona, singing with pure tone and just the right Verdi style. Mariano Caruso sings a fine Cassio and Anna di Stasio’s Emilia impresses. No one is particularly well directed in this production, but there’s a nice antique feeling to the movements that will not offend. This is for specialists, but everyone should experience a del Monaco Otello–and Gobbi is peerless.
