Otello

Verdi's Otello, written when he was 73, is the last and most psychologically precise work in the Italian dramatic tradition. Iago, a soldier passed over for promotion, decides to destroy the man who denied him — the general Otello. He does it carefully: planting suspicion, withdrawing it, replanting it, guiding Otello's imagination until the general has constructed a narrative of his wife Desdemona's unfaithfulness that is entirely Iago's architecture and entirely Otello's obsession. Desdemona has done nothing wrong. She knows something is happening and cannot find it. In the final act, she sings the Ave Maria — a prayer for protection — minutes before her death. It is heartbreaking precisely because it asks for something she will not receive. Iago is the most convincingly evil character in opera not because he is theatrical but because he is patient, quiet, and disturbingly accurate about human nature.