It’s a funny old world. Colin Davis was the Music Director at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden for thirteen years throughout the 1970s and early 80s, and during this time he inevitably, though seemingly with some reluctance, conducted a number of Verdi operas there which most of us attending as regulars came to dread as musical occasions, so sluggish, apologetically genteel and almost comically unidiomatic were they. He first undertook Otello in 1972, with Vickers and Joan Carlyle, but subsequent revivals in the house fell to the likes of Mackerras and Mehta until, early in 1980, Carlos Kleiber caused an absolute sensation with Domingo in his house debut in the title role. The fact that Davis himself then conducted another revival later the same year - albeit with Vickers – only served, almost cruelly, to emphasise the difference. With Davis’s departure from Covent Garden in1983, never to assume a titular position in any other opera house thereafter, most people would have imagined his Verdian account to have been closed for good, a likely source of sorrow, one rather felt, neither to the audience nor himself, for all that he had conducted Otello there more than any other Verdi work, and had even effectively bowed-out with it in the November of that year (with Domingo, Ricciarelli and Cappuccilli, no less).

And there, for any of us knew, the matter might have rested, a simple case – Falstaff apart, which he always did conduct superbly – of mismatched musical sympathies. But in September 1997, Georg Solti – Davis’s predecessor at the Royal Opera House – died unexpectedly a few weeks shy of his 85th birthday, and mere days before he was due to conduct Verdi’s Requiem at that year’s Proms with the London Symphony Orchestra, of which Davis had been the Principal Conductor since 1995. Sir Colin stepped in to the breach at very much the eleventh hour, and in the event conducted a performance of such blazing energy and blistering fervour, seismic and stunning, that many, myself included, wondered whether he had simply given the performance Solti had been unable to, summoned up as a kind of in memoriam (this is not so utterly strange, or unprecedented, as you might think: I once heard Mackerras conduct Goodall’s Die Walküre, all three weeks of it; and Lorin Maazel gave Klemperer’s account of Mahler’s 7th, longer than the transatlantic cable). The matter was really only resolved definitively when, as part of the happily ongoing series of concert performances of operas that Sir Colin inaugurated as his signature contribution to the LSO’s musical pre-eminence, he programmed Otello at the Barbican in 1999, with José Cura (one of the better performances he ever gave in London), Carlos Alavrez as Iago, and Andrea Danková as Desdemona. Though several aspects of the singing left something to be desired, and there were irritating minor cuts, Davis’s contribution confirmed what the Requiem had suggested: Verdi was suddenly, unexpectedly, very much his type of music, conducted with his perennial fastidious care for balance and unforced expression, but now with added temperament and theatrical flair in spades.

He has since given us, in concert, an exemplary and scintillatingly brilliant Falstaff; and shown definitively earlier this year that the Requiem remains, under him, an experience of transcendental power and spirituality. Now, ten years on, he gives us another Otello, cast with sovereign disregard for the conventional repertory niceties with nary an Italian, or indeed even remotely Italianate, singer in sight, bar the Emilia of Eufemia Tufano (in the event, ironically, the one weak link amongst all the soloists, jug-toned and unsteady). For the rest, the plan was obviously Anglo-German, with Torsten Kerl in the title role, Anne Schwanewilms as Desdemona, the Canadian-born, (musically) London-reared Gerald Finley as Iago, and the English Allan Clayton as Cassio. However, the best laid plans……

Torsten Kerl sang the dress rehearsal performance of this Otello on Tuesday, but subsequently succumbed to some seasonal vocal affliction necessitating his last-minute cancellation. Instead, Otello was sung tonight by the New Zealander, Simon O’Neill, who has already made a great impression at the ROH as Siegmund and Lohengrin, and single-handedly provided true distinction of singing and utterance, as Florestan, in Barenboim’s otherwise grisly Fidelio at this year’s Proms. O’Neill has never sung Otello in public before: indeed, I am reliably informed that certain passages of the score involving ensemble work he has never even particularly looked at before (having no plan to sing the role until 2012); and that his one and only rehearsal of the whole work in effect took place before us this evening, with a fair amount of sight- reading involved. Under the circumstances, it would be only to be expected that certain things were not quite right, or that interpretative insight was perhaps lacking, or that in some measure the fearsome vocal demands of the role weren’t entirely met.

Except, they were, all of them. I heard both Vickers and Domingo many dozens of times in the role, and retain fond memories of Carlo Cossutta and James McCracken (ugly-sounding, but hair-raisingly elemental). I am not at all sure that Simon O’Neill doesn’t have, at least in some respects, the edge on all of them. For one thing, though clinging to his score like a limpet mine (not head-buried in it, but held aloft at chest height, which makes all the difference to communication) he was supernaturally accurate in his account, nothing crooned, fudged, approximated or reduced to Sprechstimme (I mean, when did you last – or ever - hear “Dio! mi potevi scagliar” actually sung as written?). For another, the voice, though absolutely not Italian-sounding, has a clean, clear, effortless clarion ring to it – think maybe James King, or Wunderlich – that struck me as plain thrilling. The opening “Esultate” was as rock-solidly focussed, powerfully projected as I’ve ever heard, not the usual honking bronze (if you’re lucky) but somehow more like silvery-blue tempered steel; and yet the plaintive tone required by the love duet, including an exquisitely floated, plumb-in-tune “Venere splende” at the very end was effortlessly, most beautifully forthcoming.

I suspect that, like most heldentenors, O’Neill’s very top is not exactly easy, sounding appreciably harder work on the Bs than the B-flats (which had really tremendous spin and ring on them). But that’s nothing unusual, and scarcely a problem in this of all roles (though I’d worry if I were him about the upcoming ROH Walther von Stolzings, a different and altogether higher-lying kettle of fish). But for what must be termed, purely factually, a first attempt at Otello under entirely unpropitious circumstances, I think it only fair to judge O’Neill’s performance as a triumph. What he will make of the role in future – indeed, in certain respects, what he can possibly bring to it that he hasn’t already apart from body make-up – I await with impatience. Perhaps the mad-dog sense of pain that Vickers had, or Domingo’s burnished, yet sneering sarcasm. We’ll see, and in short-order I sincerely trust.

Schwanewilms being the greatest living exponent of the slightly squeezed, tubular, almost instrumental purity of timbre that characterised so many great German (or Germanic) sopranos – Janowitz, Popp, Varady all spring to mind – I was unsure as to how her flute-like, softly metallic timbre would adapt to a role that seems to cry out for Mediterranean warmth. A momentary vocal drop-out on her “Amen risponda” in the Act I duet, and one or two vocal high entries that weren’t so much subtly placed as bluntly launched seemed to be indicative of possible trouble ahead. But in fact she improved act-on-act, magnificently dominating the colossal ensemble at the end of Act III (though I do wish conductors would take note of Verdi’s quite deliberate and deeply considered revision of this problematic passage - too long and complex as he came to realise - as he definitively rewrote it for Paris in 1894). And in Act IV, notwithstanding a tempo just a fraction too unyieldingly urgent to allow for much by way of expansive phrasing, Schwanewilms’s Willow Song was not only technically immaculate, seconded by Christine Pendrill’s sentient cor anglais, but somehow, in its needle-pointed glittering perfection of incorporeal, silvery timbre, managed to evoke a kind of timeless melancholy that penetrated to the essence of the music’s meaning. The “Ave Maria” was so purely sung – as pure indeed as the striking “candida veste” she was wearing – that time itself stood still, as if reluctant to allow this woman to go to her death. This is not just great singing: it is artistry of an altogether different order, capable of adumbrating whole worlds of feeling and meaning beyond the merely mechanical traversal of the score. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone achieve it since Caballé’s glory days, and didn’t really expect to again. It is a privilege, and an experience which, once encountered, is never to be forgotten, trust me.

Scarcely any less revelatory was Gerald Finley’s remarkable Iago, again un-Italian in timbre with his smooth, fine-grained, even-textured precisely-focussed lean baritone and yet so comprehensively integrated between the registers that, for the first time I can ever remember, “Era la notte” was sung without recourse to falsetto crooning in the passages describing Cassio’s “dream”. Yet where sheer vocal heft was needed, as in the “Credo”, or the Act II conclusion, it was amply forthcoming. This was an unusual Iago, more a creature of insidious intelligence than motiveless malevolence. With his inscrutable features, and lieder-singer’s attention to words and mood-painting, I should think Finley would make for a formidable Iago on stage, and hope to see him there sooner rather than later. On this showing, he has more to offer in this repertory than the comparably improbable Keenlyside, himself already knee-deep in Verdi and for whom Iago is also doubtless just a matter of time.

Allan Clayton I last saw at Glyndebourne as a gloriously un-nerdy Albert Herring, and thought then that his was a voice to watch out for. Here, as Cassio, he made a real impression at the furthest remove from the usual reedy comprimario you get to hear in the role (though I exempt Vittorio Grigolo) and sounded as though his well-schooled, evenly-produced voice - in the Toby Spence mould - is still in the business of filling out. He even had a good stab at sounding drunk in the Act I sequence (Albert’s similar lapse from grace having provided a useful template, I suppose). I wonder how, and in what direction, his voice will develop: let’s hope we get to hear more of him both while and when it does.

The various smaller roles were all taken with real distinction, Emilia somewhat excepted, with a strappingly sonorous Lodovico from the Ukrainian bass Alexander Tsymbalyuk, bearing a most striking resemblance to Erwin Schrott that will hardly hurt his career prospects. And Ben Johnson – rare or otherwise – made much of what little of Roderigo is left after Boito’s ruthless boiling-down of one of Shakespeare’s longest plays (though the real victim of the reduction is the stealthy, subtle seduction at the heart of the Othello/Iago relationship, and the virtual loss of Emilia). Matthew Rose made much of Montano’s pronouncements in the outer acts, and even the Act III Herald, in the towering shape of Lukas Jakobski, was impressive (he’s currently on the ROH’s Jette Parker programme and clearly yet another one to look out for, though at about 6’7’’ you won’t have to look too hard).

Over it all presided Sir Colin, now, at 82, more evidently in absolute control of such a gigantic, protean score as this than ever before, shaping the emotional arc with unerring exactitude, unleashing truly terrifying levels of dynamic violence where needed, and infusing the whole opera with unmistakeable theatrical power and emotional intensity. Given how he used to conduct Verdi, I don’t know how this has happened, but I’m very, very happy that it has. His own orchestra – hard to think of the LSO as being anybody’s else’s, Gergiev notwithstanding – responded like souls possessed, and played even out of their normal, elevated mode of execution, verging on the demented (a term of high critical approval in these quarters). And the 130-strong chorus just about tested the Barbican’s shallow-bore, low head-room acoustic to near-destruction. I think the Hall’s ushers are still scraping people’s belongings, and quite possibly some actual people, off the various back walls….

Nits to pick? Well, some of the offstage trumpeting went haywire in Act III: there was a bit of a scramble amongst the gentlemen of the LSO chorus in the rhythmically trickier inner verses of the serenade to Desdemona in Act II (which Davis cut out ten years ago, though he’s no keener now than then on having the specified children sing their parts: sopranos still do duty in the children’s odd, ongoing absence). More seriously, the organ pedal–note that should underpin the entire opening storm scene right up to the chorus’s “Si calma la bufera” was once again notable by its complete sonic absence (Why? It is prescribed in the score; though it was nice to see the extraordinary chromatic bass trombone at work, not so much an actual instrument as an art installation). And there remains Sir Colin’s aversion to anything likely to sully the purity of a concert performance, including necessary sound-effects such as the tocsin alarm as the fight gets out of hand in Act I, the clash of swords, Emilia’s knocking in Act IV (“Aprite!, aprite!.... Chi batte?”) and either Otello or Desdemona sounding anything so vulgar as a death rattle. In this puritanical spirit, no attempt is made at any meaningful kind of semi-staging, and even individual “acting out” is clearly not much on the agenda – much less any kind of interaction – though Finley’s furrow-browed stone-face and Schwanewilms’s natural stage-gestures (she crossed herself before the “Ave Maria”, as a fair few sopranos before her have probably felt like doing less out of dramatically apropos piety than simple technical necessity) were all very welcome efforts. Scarcely surprisingly, Simon O’Neill mainly concentrated on his singing, though this didn’t preclude some agonised reactions, and some strangely effective – and affecting – unconscious bouts of mouthing other people’s lines at moments of highest drama, which actually lent a persuasive air of distraction to his assumption (albeit, I’m sure, unintentional).

There is a question mark hanging over Sunday’s repeat performance – which I would advise all and sundry to attend were it not for the fact it’s sold out – in that Torsten Kerl is still here, hoping to recover, and, if he does, sing. This will presumably decide who gets the subsequent LSO Live CD release (as it is, they now have one of each tenor singing Otello, Kerl at the Dress, O’Neill at the Prima, not exactly ideal for patching and editing purposes, I’d have thought). Interested as I would – or will – be to hear Kerl in the role, I’m mindful of the problems he had with this summer’s Tristans at Glyndebourne (he was quite painful the night I heard him, and plainly in trouble, and eventually replaced by Ian Storey). A second bite of the cherry for the in-all-senses heroic O’Neill would seem an only too fitting reward. But even if he doesn’t get to sing, he can console himself, secure in the knowledge that he is the classiest cover in the whole history of opera, and that already, on the strength of what was for him a general run-through, he is an Otello in a thousand.

Stephen Jay-Taylor
Opera Britannia