Royal Opera House stages landmark Otello

Russell Thomas has become the first black tenor to take the title role in Verdi’s Otello at Covent Garden in the 131 years since it was first performed there. ‘It feels like a significant moment in our history,’ said the Royal Opera House’s director of opera Oliver Mears in The Guardian, ahead of the show. ‘After the rapid change in attitudes in the last two or three years, to perform Otello with a white singer would feel bizarre to say the least – especially in London.’

Otello is the eponymous antihero of Verdi’s Shakespeare-inspired opera, a Moorish general whose romantic jealousy causes his downfall over four powerful acts. While the character is generally understood to be black, the role has widely been sung by white singers over the decades, often in blackface with their skin darkened by make-up. The offensive practice has been retired by some but not all opera houses in recent years. Stuart Skelton was the first white tenor to play the role without blackface in 2014 at English National Opera; the New York Metropolitan Opera followed suit in 2015.

Thomas arrives in London with acclaimed performances of Otello to his name, after he first sang the role in 2017. The Washington Post described his performance as being sung in ‘tones of finespun gold’, yet in an interview with the paper the American tenor also noted the danger of pigeon-holing black singers – and his varied repertoire ranges from Donizetti to Stravinsky, Beethoven to Adams.

The landmark performance is part of wider conversations happening in the opera industry about casting, diversity, and racism. In June, Covent Garden raised the curtain on its revival of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly in consultation with Japanese experts in a bid to address accusations of racism within the opera.