Giuseppe Verdi: Othello: Libretto

Giuseppe Verdi was born into a period when Italian comic opera after more than a century of world-wide triumph was losing its appeal and the musical tragedy had become the preferred form. Hence Verdi directed himself towards the musical tragedy and it was here that he achieved his towering stature - Othello will stand for a long time as an unsurpassed masterpiece.However Verdi remained convinced that opera needed laughter as well as tears and receiving the draft of a libretto in 1889 from Arrigo Boito he set to work on the monumental Falstaff the central character of which is an amalgam of two Shakespearean characters - the finely drawn figure from KingHenry IV and the caricature of knightliness gone to seed from The Merry Wives Of Windsor. The plot is taken from the latter comedy. This is the Schirmer Edition of the Vocal Score and is in Italian with an English translation by Walter Ducloux.

Lyric drama in four acts with a libretto by Arrigo Boito (founded on Shakespeare's tragedy Othello) and an English translation by Walter Ducloux. The score is extremely dramatic and complex; the tone for the whole opera is set when the curtain rises on a huge storm (there is no Overture) and the fishermen debate the fate of a ship out on the seas. The Willow song and Ave Maria in Act IV also form one of the great lyric scenes for soprano. This is the Vocal Score with a Piano reduction.