A Revolutionary ‘Otello’

A rare black tenor to be cast in the part, Russell Thomas imbues Otello with vocal and psychological nuance.

Tamara Wilson as Desdemona and Russell Thomas as Otello in the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Verdi’s ‘Otello’ PHOTO: MICHAEL COOPER

ByHeidi Waleson

April 29, 2019 4:34 p.m. ET

Montreal

In 2015, the Metropolitan Opera decided to end its practice of using dark makeup for the tenor singing the title role of Verdi’s “Otello.” While that decision prompted considerable discussion about how makeup and costume can reflect racism, a bigger question was, why don’t major opera houses cast black singers in the role? It’s not an easy problem to solve: Otello requires a dramatic tenor with a wide vocal range, the power to cut through heavy orchestration, and the skill to make the long, declamatory passages sing—ideally, a voice that marries Wagnerian stamina and Italianate beauty. Even regardless of skin color, the universe of tenors who can sing it well is small. But the controversy has finally jolted opera companies into actively looking for black tenors who fill the bill.

Russell Thomas is one of them. On Saturday, the black American tenor sang his first staged Otello (he had previously performed the role in concert), and his assured vocalism and theatrical acuity were central to the success of the Canadian Opera Company’s chilling new production. Director David Alden’s absorbingly detailed staging, first mounted for the English National Opera in 2014, zeroes in on the toxicity of Iago, who methodically controls and destroys Otello just because he can. Designer Jon Morrell’s set, a bare, crumbling, semicircular room, reads like an arena through which the leather-jacketed Iago stalks his unwitting prey. He is always present, and he dominates the show.

Russell Thomas (center) as Otello PHOTO: MICHAEL COOPER

Of the two combatants, the electrifying Gerald Finley (Iago) displayed the bigger voice, and his baritone shifted easily from the outsize nihilism in the “Credo” to the slippery, almost caressing insinuations about the infidelity of Otello’s wife, Desdemona. Rather than try to compete, or bellow his way through the stentorian parts of the title role, Mr. Thomas went for nuance. His entrance “Esultate!” rang out with clarion conviction; later, as Iago slowly wound him up, he varied his volume and expression, so that when he exploded in fury, it came as a shock. This was an insightfully psychological portrayal: Even in the love duet of Act I, one sensed the outsider Otello’s underlying anguish, and his lack of confidence around anything other than war. Mr. Thomas began “Dio! mi potevi,” Otello’s moment of greatest despair, flat on his back, almost at a whisper, and the suicide at the end was sung with the bleakness of total defeat.

Desdemona is collateral damage in this masculine battle to the death. Tamara Wilson, who has a gloriously creamy, eloquent soprano, played her as an innocent but no fool. She made Otello’s wife a complex flesh-and-blood person, a contrast to the flat Byzantine icon of the Madonna that, in this production, represented Otello’s idealized view of womanhood. (Underlining that point, Iago and Cassio use the icon as a dartboard as Otello watches from the shadows.) Andrew Haji’s bright tenor ably captured a dandyish, drunken Cassio; Carolyn Sproule was a sensitive Emilia, frozen under Iago’s thumb. Conductor Johannes Debus built drama and suspense through pacing: The opening storm scene, for example, was terrifying without overdoing the brass.

The production places the opera in the late 19th century, around the time of its 1887 premiere; its Cyprus seems like an isolated garrison colony of a decaying empire, with restive inhabitants and soldiers. The excellent chorus, aided by movement director Maxine Braham, helped establish an atmosphere of insecurity: In the storm scene, the ensemble careened from side to side, as though it were on the foundering ship, and the celebratory fire chorus had an underlying current of violence. Mr. Morrell’s somber costumes and Adam Silverman’s shadowy lighting contributed to the evocation of a forgotten place where evil can fester. When the delegation from Venice turned up in Act III, all proper in top hats and elegant clothes, they were like emissaries from another world.

—Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).