On Sept. 27 at 10:15 a.m. (6:15 p.m. UK time), English National Opera’s production of Verdi’s Otello, starring former San Francisco Opera Adler Fellows soprano Leah Crocetto (Desdemona) and tenor Stuart Skelton (Otello), broadcasts live on BBC Radio 3. Crocetto’s triumph in the production, which is already opening doors for her in other houses in the U.K., precedes her six appearances as Mimì in one of SFO’s two star-studded casts of La bohème, and her U.S. debuts in Philadelphia as Elisabetta in Verdi’s Don Carlo and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. as Madame Lidoine in Francesca Zambello’s production of Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites.
Reached by Skype in the U.K., Crocetto declared that the performances are going “amazingly well.”
“The audience is freaking out over this production,” she said. “They either love it or hate it. But they always love the singers, which is great. It’s my favorite production of the five I’ve done.”
Desdemona has now become Crocetto’s most performed role. “She’s my girl at this point,” she acknowledged. “I didn’t expect her to be. Because of my ability to sing coloratura, I thought my first role would be Leonora in Il trovatore, which is my second most performed role. Either that or some of the more serious bel canto stuff I’m doing in the future. But it’s really nice to be capped in this romantic lead all the time, which has such really beautiful legato singing.”
What is it like to sing opposite Stuart Skelton, who recently delivered such a terrifyingly violent Peter Grimes in the two San Francisco Symphony concert performances of Britten’s opera?
“Stuart is one of the best colleagues I’ve ever worked with, with the voice of God coming out of him,” she says. “He also scares the shit out of me onstage – he even growls at me! We have amazing chemistry, and he’s become one of my very dear friends. I’m close with his partner as well, which makes it easy to play lover with him onstage. I hope we get him back in San Francisco soon. What he gives as a colleague doesn’t get better.”
As it turns out, Skelton does more than growl. In David Alden’s opinion-dividing production, Otello rips Desdemona’s dress off in the middle of Act III, pulls her hair, and throws her to the ground. In Act IV, the only time he comes near Desdemona is when he strangles her onstage in the middle of the piazza — there is no bed — and then leaves her to die like a dog in the street. To Crocetto, who cried for a week when she had to leave her beloved canine companion, Ernie, at home in San Francisco because she didn’t realize that he needed to have blood work done in order to fly to the U.K., the production’s domestic violence “is very disturbing, and pretty damn powerful.
“It’s the most alone I’ve ever felt as Desdemona,” she explains. “David Alden creates such a stark contrast between all of the characters as he conveys the inside workings of Otello’s mind. Once Otello enters, he and Desdemona sing their lines to each other from opposite ends of the stage. She doesn’t even have a deep relationship with Amelia; there’s no one she can hold onto and find solace with. Desdemona rolls down the stage and Otello ends up killing himself in the same place where he killed her. As an actress who puts a lot of herself into each role, it’s been very daunting and emotional to go through this production because it’s so abusive.”
This at the end of an opera that begins with a heavenly love duet, in which Crocetto must float some glorious high notes. Even on the radio, it should be an amazing tour-de-force.