July 2005 Summer Festival of the Arts

Zona Auditorium at the Butler Institute of American Art

Opera Western Reserve was pleased to be a part of the Film Screening of Giuseppe Verdi's Otello at Youngstown's Summer Festival of the Arts.

Verdi's opera depicts the devastating effects of jealousy,
"...the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds upon".

The opera begins with Otello, a mercenary in the service of the Venetian Army, coming to Cypress. From his celebrated landing and his reuniting with his wife, Desdemona, there follows a dramatic series of events leading to a lamentable ending. Jealousy is followed by tragedy, then retribution. It is with a nearly seamless flow of momentum, building from scene to scene, that compiles an awakening of dramatic inevitability.