For the audience, too, the emotional weight is heightened as Otello takes fleeting note of the glory and love that now lie wasted. The rest of the opera plays out like a nightmare, with the near-cacophonous ferocity of the murder to the empty bars of unaccompanied recitative when Emilia confronts Otello with the truth. Here the solo string basses play a passage that grows from utterly pallid bleakness to barely containable violence. The composer’s string writing in this moment is unsullied perfection, continuing without a break to the entrance of Otello. After the simple nostalgia and foreboding of Desdemona’s “Willow Song,” her Ave Maria leads us into a translucent realm of spiritual and emotional poignancy unmatched in all of opera. The atmospheric music that opens the final act evokes a lonely melancholy similar to Der Abschied of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. It all amounts to one great and tragic Lacrimosa. The expansive writing for orchestra, chorus and soloists is marked by a disarming transparency that belies the density of its forces. Here Verdi manages to capture the brilliant radiance of Mediterranean courtly pageantry as well as the devastating weight of the public/private grief and bewilderment that have so disabled Otello and Desdemona. The third-act finale is an achievement no less impressive than the great comparable scenes in Aida and Don Carlo. The astonishing speed with which Otello is driven to his erroneous assumption is rendered plausible to the audience only by virtue of the persuasiveness of the music. While it finds its apotheosis in his blasphemous Credo, this little phrase continues to metastasize throughout the body of the drama and proves to be malignant as Otello begins to descend into the anguish brought on by his mistaken jealousy. The second act begins with a “germ motive” of Beethovenian compactness-a four-note turn of a phrase that represents the abject evil of Iago. Just as Gounod twenty years earlier used a cello quartet to symbolize the depth of Roméo and Juliette’s ardor, so Verdi uses the same instrumentation to draw us into the ineffable beauty of Desdemona and Otello’s love. It’s evident in the way in which Iago’s first-act drinking song spirals headlong into the boisterous brawl that rouses Otello’s righteous indignation. There is always a sense of inevitability to Verdi’s musical thrust. It defines who he is and gives luster to the glorious heights from which he so precipitously plummets. Sculpted in the indomitable key of C-sharp Major, his opening “Esultate!” is a phrase of stentorian heroism and nobility. Verdi’s relentless cauldron of sound makes the humans who fight against it seem the weak mortals they are, right up until the moment Otello strides ashore victorious. Nowhere in musical art is nature depicted with more elemental aggression. The orchestra is the storm that rips open the curtain with titanic fury to begin the opera. The willow will be my funeral garland.The degree to which the music of Otello is symbiotic with its drama cannot be exaggerated. Salce! Salce! Salce! Willow! Willow! Willow!Ĭantiamo! Cantiamo! Let’s sing! Let’s sing! L’amare onda del pianto, in which her heart sought solace. Gemea quel core affranto, She moaned in grief,Į dal le coglia le sgorgava il cor, And her eyes flowed with bitter tears Scorea noi rivi fra le zolle in fior, The brook flowed between the flowering banks, Her facial expressions and her slow movements shows her sorrow, despair and fearfulness of what might happen when Othello arrives.

She puts her hands up to her cheeks while singing about her eyes flowing with tears. I have also included the Italian and English translations below so we are able to follow along with what she is actually singing about. Her removing the robe seemed to be representative of being ready for bed which could also mean her acceptance of her death.

By Desdemona singing this song, it shows that she knows that her death is about to come. Seeing it acted out, sung and performed in this way makes the viewer realize how powerful this song is. I chose this adaptation because I felt that it showed how sorrowful this song and scene really is. I included an excerpt of Sonya Yoncheva performing this song at the Metropolitan Opera. In Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Otello, Desdemona sings the Willow Song right before going to sleep.

Right before Desdemona sends Emilia off before her expected death, she tells her the story of how her mother had a maid, Barbary, who had a “song of willow.” Desdemona tells Emilia that the maid died while singing it, so this will be playing over in her head tonight while she waits for Othello.

Verdi opera with desdemona