If you go WHAT: Rossini’s “Otello.” Sung in Italian with English supertitles WHEN: 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 28, 7:30 p.m. Nov. 2 and 2 p.m. Nov. 4 WHERE: National Hispanic Cultural Center, 1701 Fourth SW HOW MUCH: Tickets range from $10 to $80 and are available at the NHCC box office, by calling 724-4771 or 243-0591 or by visiting www.nhccnm.org or www.operasouthwest.org

Rossini’s ‘Otello’ much more than just a tale of love, jealousy and revenge

Tenor Rodrick Dixon said he’s been eyeing the title role of Gioacchino Rossini’s opera “Otello” for a long time.

Dixon’s interest goes back to 1993, when he covered the role of the evil aide-de-camp Iago in a Lyric Opera of Chicago production of the opera.

“The first thing that spoke to me was that the character is based on a Moor,” he said. “Being an African American it would be easy, practical for me to be cast in the part of the Moor.”

Dixon gets the opportunity in the Opera Southwest’s upcoming production. The first of three OSW performances is Sunday, Oct. 28, at the National Hispanic Cultural Center.

Rossini’s opera is loosely based on William Shakespeare’s famous tragedy “Othello.”

Dixon doesn’t find the music he sings as challenging as the character he’s portraying.

“I liken it to someone trying to play a larger-than-life character like Muhammad Ali,” he said. “It’s one thing to read the lines but another to play him because Otello is such a complex person.”

The character is much more than a husband seething with jealousy over the perceived unfaithfulness of his wife, Desdemona.

Sarah Asmar portrays Desdemona and Rodrick Dixon is Otello in Opera Southwest’s production of Rossini’s “Otello.” The company will stage two different endings to the opera. (pat vasquez-cunningham/journal)

“Why does he come to Cyprus? Why does he leave Africa? Why would Africa let a man of that great status and ability leave? No one talks about that,” Dixon said.

There are other aspects to him that relate to social acceptance, he said. Otello is a respected military leader, yet he’s viewed as an outsider among Venetians. And he’s a man whose future father-in-law doesn’t give his daughter away to him.

“It’s about a modern conversation of mixed marriage,” Dixon said.

The production, he said, tries to put a human face on the characters.

Sarah Asmar, a coloratura soprano, said her character, Desdemona, understands her duties toward her family, “but she is desperately in love with Otello, and nothing is going to stop that.”

Desdemona’s father asks her to marry her friend Rodrigo. She stands up to him.

“It’s important that you see the backbone she has,” Asmar said. “She does look at her father, tells him ‘I swore myself to Otello.’ I think it’s extremely important for her character that you just don’t see this weeping woman.”

Desdemona’s resistance to her father’s wishes at that point in the opera helps audiences understand her unswerving faithfulness toward Otello at the end.

Sarah Asmar is Desdemona, who stands up to her father when he doesn’t want her to marry Otello.

Asmar also finds a challenge in the music she sings because the lines are in an extremely low register and they lie there for a time.

Rossini’s “Otello” premiered in 1816 in Naples.

“Between that time and when (Giuseppe) Verdi’s ‘Otello’ eclipsed it, it had more than 290 productions, each with multiple performances,” said Anthony Barrese, the conductor of the OSW production.

Verdi’s “Otello” debuted in 1887 at La Scala in Milan.

Barrese said Rossini’s opera is rarely performed in the United States. The last fully staged production of it was mounted by the San Francisco Opera about 18 years ago, he said.

He cited several factors why he thinks Rossini’s opera is so infrequently staged – Verdi’s is more well known and sticks closer to Shakespeare’s play, and Rossini’s requires six tenors.

Barrese said Opera Southwest has been doing Rossini’s comic operas and wanted to do “this great piece. It’s important to demonstrate that we at Opera Southwest can do not only the bread-and-butter repertoire.”

He said OSW has received attention in Opera News magazine for producing “Otello” and for doing special presentations of it.

For its Oct. 28 performance, the audience will hear both the tragic and happy endings.

Rodrick Dixon says his character of Otello is much more complex than simply a raging jealous husband. (pat vasquez-cunningham/journal)

Rossini initially wrote a tragic ending, but then he composed a happy ending based on the demands of operagoers in Rome, said David Bartholomew, the stage director of the OSW production.

For OSW’s Nov. 2 and Nov. 4 performances, audiences will vote during the intermissions about which ending they want.

“The company will perform the ending that wins the vote,” said Barrese, who is also OSW’s artistic director. “But the audience won’t know (which ending) until they see it, whether Desdemona lives or dies.

“It’s to keep the audience in dramatic suspense and to give them the feeling that they have a say in it.”

Bartholomew said Barrese had brought to OSW’s attention the scholarship on the opera and its endings.