Last last month, Opera Siam celebrated Verdi's 200th birthday by mounting the Southeast Asian premiere of Otello, considered by many to be the master's masterpiece. Aware that, in this Verdi year, he needed a new twist, artistic director Somtow Sucharitkul went to Phya Rachawangsan, a play by King Rama VI which is adapted from Shakespeare's Othello and which just happens to be having its own 100th anniversary this year.
Opera Siam's production became as much a celebration of Thailand's new creative confidence as a performance of a classic. This was not an Otello you could hope to see in Europe. If you closed your eyes, you would hear an excellent performance of Verdi's opera; but if you closed your ears, you would see King Rama VI's play, in which the setting has moved from the Mediterranean to the Straits of Malacca, and in which the Islamic outsider Otello isn't having jealous fits on Christian Cyprus, but in the Buddhist kingdom of Srivijaya, circa 700 AD.
It is so startling and original a concept that Somtow doesn't have to do anything else at all. Into this setting he places a fairly conventional Otello, not rethinking any of the motivations or adding outlandish subplots as would almost certainly occur in any of the "Euro-trash" versions.
Yet every conventional operatic gesture, every trope becomes informed with this cultural duality and forces you to examine every moment of the opera as though it were completely new. With honour killings in the news these days, this concept makes Otello contemporary and relevant.
The concept is so simple it could only have been thought up by a fool or a genius. With well colour-coordinated, batik-based costumes, a Borobodur-like set by Dean Shibuya who also designed Reya: The Musical, and powerful, chiaroscuro lighting by Ryan Attig, one tends toward the latter theory.
The singing of the three leads was almost faultless. Jeffrey Springer as Otello may have done a lot of scenery-chewing, but he delivered vocally. Nancy Yuen was a creamy Desdemona, her characterisation perhaps a little close to her signature Butterfly. Her pianissimo top notes are still all there and there are glimpses of a steelier Yuen than we've seen in the past. Phillip Joll, previously seen as Wotan in Bangkok, was a complete surprise as Iago: urbanely evil. The smaller roles, Emanuela Barazia as Emilia and Javier Agullo as Cassio in particular, were well filled. The chorus began feebly, but eventually rose to decent dramatic heights, and they always looked great. This was a cast that only the top opera houses in Europe could assemble, but Bangkok managed to do it.
But the kudos as biggest star of the evening must go to the orchestra. The Siam Philharmonic could belong in any major city. They play with passion and followed the twists and turns of Somtow's Italianate rubato with nary a hitch. To the surprise of most residents, Bangkok now has a genuine, credible, international-standard opera scene. This Otello is the proof.
