by Nathan Southern
synopsis
In the final decades of his life, opera guru Walter Felseinstein (1901-75) built and sustained a reputation for restaging seminal works from the operatic canon for film cameras, and shooting them on closed sets, usually with the original casts involved. Such was the case with this unique 1969 version of Giuseppe Verdi's four-act opera Othello, which Verdi, in turn, adapted from William Shakespeare's iconic tragedy. As filmed at the DEFA Studio in Babelsberg, this version stars Hanns Nocker as Othello, Christa Noack as Desdemona, Vladimir Bauer as Iago and Hans-Otto Rogge as Cassio. The Chorus and Orchestra of the Komische Oper Berlin provide added musical accompaniment.
