As men, Othello and Macbeth have some things in common: they are both men of action, brave and proven warriors, whose natural element seems to be war – blood imagery collects around them both – there are over 100 references to blood in Macbeth. They are both superstitious (see below). They are also loyal supporters of the state (at least when their plays open) and are respected by what might be referred to as the political class: Brabantio, for example, a senator, ‘loved’ Othello and ‘oft invited’ him to his home, but, crucially, did not consider him suitable son in law material and is appalled when Othello’s relationship with Desdemona is revealed to him by Iago. This is one of several vital differences between these warrior heroes: Macbeth, initially at least, is very much a member of the establishment, in a way Othello is not. The reasons for this are not hard to find: Macbeth is Scottish through and through, he is Thane of Glamis, he is King Duncan’s ‘cousin’ (that might not necessarily mean a family connection but it certainly implies affection and respect on the King’s part), and he is an aristocrat married to another aristocrat – Lady Macbeth is a class act, as her eloquent welcome to King Duncan indicates. Othello, by contrast, is ‘other’ in a number of ways: he is, of course black, which makes him exotic (persons of colour were not unknown in Elizabethan and Jacobean England , but they certainly were not common), and his experiences compound his otherness: most of his life has been spent as a soldier, and he claims to know little of the world apart from ‘broils and battles’.
Here, as elsewhere, Othello is falsely modest. He is, for example, an astute politician: he sees the value of Cassio’s intellect and education over Iago’s practical experience when appointing his lieutenant, and he is a singularly accomplished orator – not at all ‘rude’ in his speech as he claims. It is his extraordinary command of language, famously described by Wilson Knight as ‘Othello’s music’, that is his most impressive quality, alongside his military prowess. He says that Desdemona ‘loved me for the dangers I had passed’ but his telling of the story is at least as important as the story itself.
He is also a vital part of the Venetian military machine, and he is keenly aware of this. Even at his lowest ebb, when he is about to kill himself, he reminds us that ‘I have done the state some service and they know it.’
Despite all this, Othello remains an outsider, conscious of his otherness. His blackness is important in this regard, but he is also worried about being old – ‘declined into the vale of years’, even though he remarks ‘but that’s not much’. Crucially, Othello can never finally decide who he really is. At various times he is a soldier, statesman, orator, upholder of what might be called professional standards, ‘How comes it Michael you are thus forgot?’ he asks the drunk Cassio, seducer (of Desdemona and possibly of Emelia also), but underneath all this, profoundly superstitious, ‘free and open’, credulous, passionate, self-dramatising and, above all, capable of the most violent jealousy. Othello only gets it half right when he says he is ‘one not easily jealous but, being wrought/Perplexed in the extreme.’ Othello is of course, very easily jealous, and this fatal flaw is exploited by Iago, who uses his ice cold intellect to reduce Othello to a state of such perplexity that his eloquence is reduced to the cry of ‘goats and monkeys!’ Here his superstition plays a vital part – the missing handkerchief, with ‘magic in the web of it’ becomes his idee fixe, the symbol of Desdemona’s sexual betrayal, her far from fortunate fall, where the strawberries embroidered on the handkerchief take the place of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. It is worth remarking here that Macbeth is also prey to superstition – he believes the witches have made him invulnerable with their prophecies – he is not as gullible as Othello but he is deceived just the same.
Ultimately, Othello is unable to reconcile his multiple selves and it could be argued that Iago strips away all those selves save the least admirable, barbaric one. Othello only recovers his sense of nobility when it is too late – Desdemona is dead and Othello’s only recourse is self-slaughter. Even here there is multiplicity:
And say besides that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and a turbanned Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,
I took by th’ throat the circumcised dog
And smote him – thus!
Here Othello seems to be slaying the Turkish enemy, Iago, and himself all at the same time. Only on the point of death does Othello, as it were, come to himself, suggesting a sexual consummation with Desdemona in death, a Liebestod:
I kissed thee ere I killed thee: no way but this,
Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.
It would be impossible to do justice to such complexity in operatic form, so, wisely, Verdi and his librettist Boito, do not attempt to, but the various aspects of Othello’s character are illustrated, and magnificently illustrated, in broader, less subtle terms than Shakespeare is able to achieve, but still wonderfully well. The combination of Othello’s self-dramatisation and the famous ‘Othello’s music’ of his speech, gives Verdi and Boito ample material. We have the victorious warrior, grandiloquent, even boastful in his opening ‘Esultate’. There is the imperious general, fearless leader of men, in his commanding ‘Abbasso le spade!’
There is also the superb love duet ‘Gia della notte densa’ which, on one level, shows a gentler, more conventionally romantic Othello, but which perhaps also contains a subtle irony, which involves the type of tenor who usually sings Otello. Othello/Otello voices are normally large, dark and heroic and even great Otellos find it difficult not to sound occasionally clumsy in the more lyrical music in this duet. The final top A flat (marked pp) is particularly tricky, and, in my experience, most tenors opt for a rather more full-on, if not fully stentorian, vocal approach. Is Verdi intentionally hinting by means of music that Othello is not entirely comfortable with the conventional language and gestures of romantic love?
Another great moment in ‘Otello’ is Iago’s so called ‘Credo’. This is seen by some commentators as a coarsening of Iago’s character, but given the impossibility of doing operatic justice to the diabolic subtlety of Iago’s character, with his constant intellectual commentary on the tragedy he precipitates, (one aspect of this commentary brilliantly described by Coleridge as ‘the motive hunting of motiveless malignity.’), Verdi and Boito can be forgiven for fleshing out this ‘malignity’ to some extent. Iago worships a cruel god and has a nihilistic certainty that the end of life is death and nothing more, ‘la morte e nulla.’ Any baritone who has the voice for this superb aria cannot fail to make an effect – the vocal writing is simply brilliant.
I am leaving Desdemona until last, but not, I’m afraid, because I find her of overriding interest. She is generally irritatingly passive in Shakespeare’s play, and when she is not being passive she is obtuse (stop pestering your husband about Cassio – please!). Of course Shakespeare is not subject to normal rules and behaviour (his genius was, in part, governed by what Keats defined as ‘Negative Capability’) – the fact is, he chose to make Desdemona passive/obtuse just as he chose to make Othello credulous and bone headed, but she remains pitiful (in the most positive sense) and he remains magnificent. It is also true that she comes sharply into focus in both play and opera – Shakespeare’s use of music is fascinating (a future Blog topic perhaps…) and no more so than when Desdemona sings her ‘Willow’ song – at a vital dramatic moment the greatest dramatist the world has ever seen gets his main female character to sing, (cf Verdi getting Lady Macbeth to read Macbeth’s letter rather than sing it). Verdi’s Desdemona is, inevitably, more vocal than Shakespeare’s, and her increased eloquence reaches its height in the final act of the opera – her ‘Salce’ (willow) aria, is a high point in the 19th century soprano repertoire.
A final poignancy, and further illustration of the genius of Verdi and Boito is that Otello’s final word is ‘bacio’, in an echo of the first act love duet. At the point of death, Otello finds the peace that has previously eluded him. Both Shakespeare and Verdi supply his Liebestod.