IAGO
GREATEST LOVE, GREATEST BETRAYAL
A musical based on Shakespeare’s Othello The brilliant classic drama catapulted by music into the burning present
And told just as Shakespeare’s most famous villain experiences it
IAGO
You will love him…
The only thing that has changed in the past ten thousand years is technology. Human passions – love, hate, hunger for power, jealousy – all remain the same as they were back in the Stone Age. And mankind remains just as defenseless against them as ever, no matter whether it is armed with a hand ax or a laser-sighted handgun.
In the world of musical production history there exists only one successful attempt at retelling William Shakespeare’s Hamlet through music. The minds behind that project, Hamlet The Rock Opera, are Czech composer and lyricist Janek Ledecky and American director and playwright Robert Johanson. Hamlet set out on its winning track in 1999 in Prague, and it has taken top prizes not only in the USA, but in Europe and Asia as well. Its number of performances is nearing 2,000. And the number of spectators crossed 1.300.000.
This is one of the reasons why it didn’t take a lot of work for Robert Johanson to convince Janek to embark together once again on creating a musical retelling of another of Shakespeare’s drama, which became a symbol of love destroyed by the devil’s intrigues and morbid jealousy simultaneously.
William Shakespeare wrote the drama The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice for the Globe Theater in 1603. Since that time, Othello has charmed the stage in hundreds of stagings and in thousands of performances all around the world. It has also been filmed in six famous film versions. The only praiseworthy attempt at interpreting Othello though music thus far was Verdi’s classic opera from 1887.
Janek Ledecký and Robert Johanson presents an unexpected and very attractive version of the classic drama. They place the entire storyline in the white-hot present, and raise a racial conflict to a religious level. And of all places, in the Middle East. A place where still today, adulterers are stoned.