More videos? Yeah, it’s that kind of week. But this one is pretty fun—an Italian newsreel covering opening night of the Metropolitan Opera’s 1938 production of Verdi’s Otello. Backstage footage of Lawrence Tibbett (Iago), Giovanni Martinelli (Otello) and Maria Caniglia (Desdemona), along with glimpses of the thoroughly old-school costumes and staging.
The Met’s 1938 Otello was recorded for broadcast.* You can hear Tibbett sing the “Brindisi” here, with Nicolas Massue as Cassio and Giovanni Paltrinieri as Roderigo. Ettore Panizza conducts.
Correction: should read “recorded from a broadcast” (see comments).
That is great – I am the world’s biggest Martinelli fan and it makes me so happy to see the newsreel. I would not say it was recorded for broadcast; it was broadcast and somebody recorded it off the air onto acetates. It may have been a dentist in NY who evidently recorded a <>lot<> of Met broadcasts, or it may have been paid for by Tibbett or Martinelli.