Opera / Verdi’s “Otello,” conductor Andrea Battistoni, revival director Luke Joslin, for Opera Australia, at Sydney Opera House until March 19. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA

THIS production of Verdi’s “Otello” is one of the most splendid in its repertoire, enlivened by a brilliant cast.

It’s still the same production by the late German director Harry Kupfer, set on a large staircase that is showing its age, but the dazzling dramatic performances in the three main roles make you forget all that.

Right from the outset you knew this was going to be a performance of rare quality as the Opera Australia chorus – solid at any time – whipped up a vocal storm at sea for the violent opening of Verdi’s master tragedy, located for this version in early 20th century Cyprus.

And with the dynamic, dramatic conducting of youthful maestro Andrea Battistoni, the orchestra, too, leapt into the dramatic fray with gusto.

While all the supporting roles were convincingly performed, all eyes were upon Korean tenor Yonghoon Lee as Otello, a surprising casting choice, given his quiet and modest demeanour.

There was no attempt to make him look darker or more like the “Moor” of Shakespeare’s play, but the payoff came when his demeanour changed into something more violent as the raging jealousy which forms the centre of this opera took hold.

As his opposite number Iago – and the pair have sung together before internationally – is the Italian tenor Marco Vratogna.

It is well known that the composer found the character of Iago so fascinating that he nearly named the opera after it, and Vratogna makes a meal of it, investing in the part with all the devilish moves and reactions he can, including a brilliant moment where he throws away a knife which Otello offers him in a gesture of blood brotherhood.

Verdi has painted Iago as a companion of the dark forces, an atheist at heart, or at best the servant of a cruel god. His famous aria, “Credo in un dio crudel” (“all the evil I think and do was decreed for me by fate”) where he dedicates himself to sheer cunning and malevolence, show him to be very different from Shakespeare’s strange, motiveless character. Vratogna brings the full range of his deep, resonant voice to bear and the impression he makes is so strong that it seems fitting he should disappear into the darkness at the end.

Quiet and gentle at the beginning, but increasingly potent, soprano Karah Son steals the show as a ravishingly innocent Desdemona.

Son seizes the centre stage in the second half of the tragedy in an extraordinary mixture of subtlety and power. This Desdemona is no willing victim.

Her “Willow Song” is the most affecting I have ever seen and heard as she takes her voice down to the most minuscule sound level.

If there is any flaw in this production, which had me and the rest of the audience on the edge of our seats for the whole night, it is in the ending.

Otello, unlike Shakespeare’s character, does not smother Desdemona, nor does he ever seem to shrink from his intent to murder her so that both the magnificent Shakespearean poetry and the wavering emotions of the hero – ”Yet I’ll not shed her blood, Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow, And smooth as monumental alabaster” are dropped by Verdi for a grim death where Otello bashes Desdemona‘s head repeatedly on the stairs. This was no sacred cause as the play’s hero saw it, but simple domestic violence.

Although Battistoni and the orchestra quickly brought the tragedy to a dignified end, it was a violent and shabby end to one of Verdi’s most tragic operas – but don’t miss it.