OTELLO 1887, 2015
The work takes as point of departure Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Otello which in turn takes
its plot from William Shakespeare’s 1603/4 tragedy by the same name. Filmed in the
gardens of the Palacio de Cristal in Madrid on occasion of the artist‘s solo exhibition
entitled Splendide Hotel, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s Otello begins with what
appears to be a nighttime view of the structure. Reminiscent of the famous 1851
Crystal Palace by Joseph Paxton in London, it was built in 1887, the same year Verdi’s
opera premiered in Milaris La Scala.
The film can be seen in reference to Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s larger project
M.2062, which is, in the artist’s words, a prospective and fragmented opera that
incorporates “not only literature, movies and music but also quotations, adaptations,
juxtapositions, games, and identities. It is an opera with author-characters such as
Emily Brontë and Edgar Allen Poe, fictional characters drawn from movies and novels,
and also real people who inspired extraordinary films that feature opera.”
But in contrast to the artist’s apparition works that are enacted by the artist herself, the
beautifully shot film uses the constructed environment for a staging of parts of Verdi’s
opera with other actors.
Otello 1887, 2015
HD video (color, sound)
25:31 min
(DGF 237)
Film still
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