Otello

In Brief: In 1986, in one of their rare attacks of culture, the amazing team of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus opted to produce and release (through their Canon Films company) Franco Zeffirelli’s film version of Gisuseppe Verdi’s opera Otello, which, of course, is based on Shakespeare’s play. Well, you don’t get much more cultured than that — and Zeffirelli was, of course, a wholly respectable name in film, in opera and in Shakespeare. Zeffirelli’s glossy, solid productions of opera on the stage were very well-regarded, as much for their look as anything else, which was also his doing, since he designed the sets. That, of course, meant that Zeffirelli would design the sets here, too. Culture and respectability is a hard parlay to buck, especially when you head up a company mostly known for titles like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986). And Golan-Globus pretty much got what they paid for — along with two of the biggest names in music: singer Plácido Domingo and conductor Lorin Maazel. This excerpt was taken from a review by Ken Hanke published on Sept. 16, 2009.