It was also the third of Verdi's operas to be based on a Shakespearean play, following his earlier Macbeth and Otello.

Otello is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare's play Othello.

With that, their mutual friendship and respect blossomed and, though Verdi's projection for an opera based on King Lear never came to anything, Boito provided subtle and resonant libretti for Verdi's last masterpieces, Otello ( 1887 ) and Falstaff ( 1893 ).

Otello is an opera in three acts by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Berio di Salsi, based on Shakespeare's play Othello.

It is an accurate and learned, yet dramatic and humorous, depiction of Verdi's relationship with his librettist Arrigo Boito, and the attempts of Giulio Ricordi and Franco Faccio to get the two to collaborate on a project, Otello.

** Giuseppe Verdi's opera Otello makes its first appearance on Live from the Met, in a complete production of the opera starring Jon Vickers.

This dispute originated in a disagreement over the production of his Giovanna d ' Arco in 1845 ; however the composer later conducted his Requiem there on 25 May 1874 and he announced in 1886 that La Scala would host the premiere of his penultimate opera Otello.

* The play After Aida — a 1985 play-with-music by Julian Mitchell — depicts the struggle of Giulio Ricordi and Franco Faccio to get the retired Verdi to collaborate with young Boito on a project, which resulted in Otello.

On radio, Toscanini conducted seven complete operas, including La bohème, La traviata, and Otello, all of which were eventually released on records and CD, thus enabling the modern listening public to have at least some idea of what an opera conducted by Toscanini sounded like.

Her second appearance in Chicago on 23 November was as Desdemona in the company's first ever performance of Verdi's Otello, and she also sang the role there at a gala performance of Act 4 on 9 December.

The Met's experiments with television go back to 1948 when a complete performance of Verdi's Otello was broadcast live on ABC-TV with Ramón Vinay, Licia Albanese, and Leonard Warren.

Rosvaenge was equally impressive as Andrea Chénier and was also an acclaimed and exciting Radames and Otello: he was often heard in this latter role on German radio.

Tebaldi made her American debut in 1950 as Aïda at the San Francisco Opera ; her Metropolitan Opera debut took place on January 31, 1955, as Desdemona opposite Mario del Monaco's Otello.

Giuseppe Verdi's Otello was broadcast complete by ABC-TV on November 29, 1948, the opening night of the season.

These included Plácido Domingo flying into San Francisco — albeit three hours after curtain time-to replace the ailing Carlo Cossutta on the opening night of Otello, and the last minute substitution by Leontyne Price for Margaret Price in the role of Aida.

The baritone on the Otello duet is anonymous but Aspinall believes it might be Tamagno's younger brother, Giovanni, who had a minor singing career.

Muzio made her operatic début in Arezzo ( 15 January 1910 ) in the title-role of Massenet's Manon, and despite her youth she made rapid progress in the opera-houses of Italy, leading to débuts at La Scala in Milan in 1913 ( as Desdemona in Verdi's Otello ), in Paris ( as Desdemona ) and in London at Covent Garden ( as Puccini's Manon Lescaut ) in 1914 ; she stayed on in London to sing other roles including Mimì and Tosca ( both with Caruso ).

# Canzone ( Canzone )-Based on the gondolier's song " Nessun maggior dolore " from Rossini's Otello.

Feeling slighted about being passed over for the September 1978 telecast of Otello, McCracken walked out on the Met, only to return to a rousing ovation in October 1983 for the Centennial Gala, during which he performed Otello's Act 3 soliloquy, " Dio!

McCracken made a number of complete opera recordings, including " Le prophète " ( with Marilyn Horne and Renata Scotto, ( Col / CBS ), c1976 ), " Carmen " ( conducted by Leonard Bernstein, ( DG ), 1972 ), " Fidelio " ( with Birgit Nilsson, ( Decca / London ), 1964 ), " Otello " ( with Dame Gwyneth Jones, ( EMI / Angel ), 1968 ) and " Pagliacci ", on which side 4 of the original LP version was a recital of opera arias, ( Decca / London ), ( 1967 ), as well as Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder ( with Jessye Norman, Tatiana Troyanos and David Arnold, ( Phi ), 1979 ), and a program of Irish and Scottish songs with piano ( EMI / Angel ), 1977.

Elsewhere in 1988, Anderson focused on Rossini roles: playing her first Armida in Aix-en-Provence, appearing in Otello at the Pesaro Festival, and debuting as Anna in Maometto II ( an early version of Rossini's Le siège de Corinthe ) at the San Francisco Opera ( she had previously recorded this work with Samuel Ramey in 1983 ).

These recordings, which include a few French songs and arias from Otello, Falstaff and Don Giovanni, have been reissued on CD by various companies.

A fine actor, Vinay was also the first tenor to sing the role of Otello on television.

Highlights in Boston that she conducted and / or stage directed included La voyage de la lune, Otello ( with Tito Gobbi as Iago ), Command Performance ( world premiere ), Manon and Faust ( both with Beverly Sills and Norman Treigle ), Lulu ( U. S. East Coast premiere ), I puritani ( with Dame Joan Sutherland ), Intolleranza ( U. S. premiere ), Boris Godunov ( original version ), Hippolyte et Aricie ( U. S. stage premiere, with Plácido Domingo ), La bohème ( with Renata Tebaldi and Domingo ), Moses und Aron ( U. S. premiere ), The Rake's Progress, Bluebeard's Castle, Carmen ( with Marilyn Horne ), Macbeth ( original version ), The Good Soldier Schweik, The Fisherman and His Wife ( world premiere, with Muriel Costa-Greenspon ), La finta giardiniera, Norma ( with Sills ), Les Troyens, Don Carlos ( U. S. premiere of original French version ), Don Quichotte, War and Peace ( U. S. stage premiere, with Arlene Saunders ), Benvenuto Cellini ( U. S. premiere, with Jon Vickers ), I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Montezuma ( U. S. premiere ), Ruslan and Ludmila ( U. S. premiere ), Rigoletto ( with Sills, Richard Fredricks, and Susanne Marsee ), Stiffelio ( U. S. stage premiere ), La damnation de Faust, Tosca ( with Magda Olivero ), La vide breve, El retablo de maese Pedro, The Ice Break ( U. S. premiere ), Aïda ( with Shirley Verrett in the title role ), Die Soldaten ( U. S. premiere ), The Invisible City of Kitezh, Taverner ( U. S. premiere ), The Makropoulos Case ( with Anja Silja, William Cochran, and Chester Ludgin ), Médée ( in French and Greek ), Dead Souls ( U. S. premiere ), Der Rosenkavalier ( with Dame Gwyneth Jones ), and, finally, The Balcony ( world premiere, 1990 ).

As sources, Shakespeare's plays provided Verdi with lifelong inspiration: some, such as King Lear were never realized but he wrote his two final operas using Othello as the basis for Otello ( 1887 ) and The Merry Wives of Windsor as the basis for Falstaff ( 1893 ).

Of these Otello formed the climax to his reform of serious opera, and offers a suggestive contrast with the treatment of the same subject at a similar point of artistic development by the composer Giuseppe Verdi.

But he continued to develop his style, composing perhaps the greatest French Grand Opera, Don Carlos, and ending his career with two Shakespeare-inspired works, Otello and Falstaff, which reveal how far Italian opera had grown in sophistication since the early 19th century.

While it has not proved to be as immensely popular as the Verdi works that immediately preceded it, namely Aida and Otello, Falstaff has long been an admired favorite with critics and musicians because of its brilliant orchestration, scintillating libretto and refined melodic invention.

* Otello ( 1986 ) – British Academy of Film and Television Arts winner, foreign language film ; with Plácido Domingo and Katia Ricciarelli

The second performance was Thomas ' Hamlet with the baritone Titta Ruffo During the inaugural season seventeen operas were performed with famous stars such as Ruffo, Feodor Chaliapin in Boito's Mefistofele, Antonio Paoli in Verdi's Otello, and the world

He was renowned for his affinity with the works of Verdi, notably his breakthrough role of Ford in Falstaff, Simon Boccanegra in Simon Boccanegra and Iago in Otello.

Balfe wrote another opera Un avvertimento ai gelosi at Pavia, and Enrico Quarto at Milan, where he had been engaged to sing in in Rossini's Otello with Malibran at La Scala in 1834.

During his years in Italy Meyerbeer became acquainted with, and impressed by, the works of his contemporary Gioachino Rossini who by 1816, at the age of 24, was already director of both major opera houses in Naples and in the same year premiered his operas The Barber of Seville and Otello.

Although Otello was his best role, throughout his career, Del Monaco sang a number of other roles with great acclaim, for example: Canio in Pagliacci ( Leoncavallo ), Radames in Aida ( Verdi ), Don Jose in Carmen ( Bizet ), Chenier in Andrea Chénier ( Giordano ), Manrico in Il trovatore ( Verdi ), Samson in Samson and Delilah ( Saint-Saëns ), and Don Alvaro in La forza del destino ( Verdi ).

She created the leading female role in Elisabetta, regina d ' Inghilterra ( 1815 ), Otello ( 1816 ), Armida ( 1817 ), Mosè in Egitto ( 1818 ), Maometto II ( 1820 ), and five other Rossini operas up to and including his final contribution to the genre, Semiramide, which was also written with Colbran in the major role.

During the following years she starred in the telecasts of Manon Lescaut, Luisa Miller, Don Carlo, Il Trittico, Francesca da Rimini and as Desdemona with Jon Vickers in Verdi's Otello.

Other important commercial recordings include Rigoletto with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Carlo Bergonzi under Rafael Kubelík, Turandot with Birgit Nilsson and Franco Corelli under Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, I Pagliacci with José Carreras, Cavalleria rusticana with Plácido Domingo, Norma with Tatiana Troyanos, Otello ( Verdi's ), Adriana Lecouvreur and Andrea Chénier.

Thus, in 1868 when the composer died in Paris, his Stabat Mater ( Rossini ) was performed along with Semiramide and Otello.

But his international career did not take off explosively until 1888, with the role of Otello — which Verdi had penned with Tamagno's voice in mind — serving as his global calling card.

He also translated the libretto of Otello while he was designing the English National Opera production.

Music-performance historian John Potter has this to say about Otello in his 2009 book, Tenor: History of a Voice ( Yale University Press, p. 61 ): " The title role was one of the most taxing tenor parts ever written and was created specifically for the unique talents and vocal persona of Tamagno.

His concert operatic titles were principally The Prologue ( from Pagliacci ), " Iago's Credo " ( Otello ), " Even Bravest Heart " ( Faust ) –- written originally by Gounod for Santley -- " Largo al Factotum " ( The Barber of Seville ), " Non più andrai " ( The Marriage of Figaro ), " O Star of Eve " ( Tannhäuser ), the " Toreador Song " ( Carmen ), " Pari siamo " ( Rigoletto ) and " Within This Hallowed Dwelling " ( The Magic Flute ).

This enables the singer to cut through the wall of sound produced by a full Romantic orchestra in a wide variety of roles, excluding only the most taxing ones written by the likes of Richard Wagner ( such as Brünhilde, Isolde, Tristan and Siegfried ), Giacomo Meyerbeer ( John of Leyden ), Verdi ( Otello ), Puccini ( Turandot, Calaf ) and Richard Strauss ( Elektra ).

* Rossini's Otello: the title role was written for a tenor, but also was sung by mezzo-soprano Maria Malibran