Otello - Verdi | From the Doge's Palace in Venice (Tito Gobbi - La Fenice 1966)

Composer: Giuseppe Verdi
Librettist: Arrigo Boïto
Premiere: 5 February 1887, Milan (La Scala)
Language: Italian
Translation: English Subtitles
Synopsis: https://www.opera-arias.com/verdi/otello/synopsis/

Cast & Characters:
Pier Miranda Ferraro as Otello
Laura Londi as Desdemona
Tito Gobbi as Iago
Giorgio Goretti as Cassio
Anna Di Stasio as Emilia
Augusto Pedroni as Roderigo
Alessandro Maddelena as Lodovico
Angelo Nosotti as Montano

Chorus and Orchestra of Teatro La Fenice
Conductor Nino Sanzogno

Otello is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare's play Othello. It was Verdi's penultimate opera, and was first performed at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on February 5, 1887. The composer was reluctant to write anything new after the success of Aida in 1871, and he retreated into retirement. It took his Milan publisher Giulio Ricordi the next ten years, first to encourage the revision of Verdi's 1857 Simon Boccanegra by introducing Boito as librettist and then to begin the arduous process of persuading and cajoling Verdi to see Boito's completed libretto for Otello in July/August 1881. It wasn't until 1884, five years after the first drafts of the libretto, that composition began, with most of the work finishing in late 1885. When it finally premiered in Milan on 5 February 1887, it proved to be a resounding success, and further stagings of Otello soon followed at leading theatres throughout Europe and America.