Last night I watched a concert presentation of Rossini’s Otello from Opera by Request, a company who demonstrate their importance with every outing.

…The prolific Rossini, one of the quickest composers in history, who premiered three operas in 1816, and four the next year likely didn’t agonize over his work the way Boito and Verdi did. Does it matter that the story has been changed? Does it matter that some of the music in the scene where Otello murders Desdemona resembles music we hear in Barber of Seville, composed earlier the same year?  Not when the goal is a virtuoso display of vocal fireworks.

– Leslie Barcza,
barczablog

Thank you to Leslie Barcza for this insightful and supportive review of our most recent performance. Read the full review here.