For the first time in its history, the New York Metropolitan Opera isn’t using blackface in its production of Othello; but this has divided audiences, observes Michael Cooper.
At a recent dress rehearsal at the Metropolitan Opera, there was something missing when the Latvian tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko sang the title role of Verdi’s “Otello”: the stage makeup with names like Indian Red and Otello Brown that opera companies have used for more than a century to darken pale singers playing the part.
“The Met breaks tradition, and I will be white,” Mr. Antonenko shrugged as he was powdered in his dressing room.
It was an offhand way of phrasing a seismic shift... Keep reading on The New York Times
At a recent dress rehearsal at the Metropolitan Opera, there was something missing when the Latvian tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko sang the title role of Verdi’s “Otello”: the stage makeup with names like Indian Red and Otello Brown that opera companies have used for more than a century to darken pale singers playing the part.
“The Met breaks tradition, and I will be white,” Mr. Antonenko shrugged as he was powdered in his dressing room.
It was an offhand way of phrasing a seismic shift... Keep reading on The New York Times