Giuseppe Verdi: Otello

Soloists:

Renata Tebaldi, Hans Beirer, William Dooley

Orchestra, choir:

Chor und Orchester der Deutschen Oper Berlin

Conductor:

Giuseppe Patanè

Director:

Hans-Peter Lehmann

Location:

Berlin

 
When Renata Tebaldi sang the role of Desdemona in Verdi's Otello at London's Covent Garden in 1950, it was her first opera performance outside Italy. It was also the role in which she made her final appearance on the opera stage, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1973. Between these two performances, she appeared as Desdemona nearly a hundred times, not to mention two studio recordings with Alberto Eredi and Herbert von Karajan. Arturo Toscanini gave her the nickname "voce d'angelo" (angelic voice). She made her highly acclaimed debut as Desdemona at the Metropolitan Opera in 1955, and from that moment on, New York became the center of her life. From there, she made regular and lengthy concert tours around the world, but opera performances in Europe – especially in Northern Europe – were extremely rare. Tebaldi visited Berlin only twice. She gave a captivating concert at the Deutschlandhalle in May 1961. At that time, she promised her fans that she would return, and the Berliner Morgenpost even heard a “rumor” that she would perform her classic role of Desdemona at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, which was reopening its doors. This production of Otello was planned as a media event from the outset, and cameras were already in place during the preliminary rehearsals. She made her highly acclaimed debut as Desdemona in M. The first performance was held for invited guests on August 30, 1962, and was recorded in its entirety for the Sender Freies Berlin (SFB) television program. The second performance was open to the opera audience and was broadcast by SFB-Hörfunkprogramm.