THE NEW OTHELLO.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2051, 31 July 1875, Page 4

THE NEW OTHELLO.

The London correspondent of the Australasian thus describes his impression^ of Salvini, who is now playing Othello at Drury-lane Theatre :-rThe Italian tragedian, Salvini, who has been acting Othello, to enthusiastic audiences at Drury-lane, was hardly known by name in this country, though lie had established a great reputation in America, before he came to London and took us all by surprise. His representation of the Moor of Venice is very fine in some respects,, but the translation of Shakespeare's tragedy into Italian has been so badly made, and the proportions of the play have been so disfigured in the manipulation^ that one feels the actov is not given fair and free scope for his undoubted powers. The whole of the intrigue by means of which lago contrives to persuade Othello that Desdemona gave "the handkerchief" to Cassio—the interview between lago and Cassio, which Othello half hears, and is persuaded that it relates to Desdemona— is omitted, and the murderous resolution of the Moor is arrived at without his haying received a tittle of the proof on which he has previously insisted, with threats to his tormentor. To spectators who cannot forget, under the excitement of fine acting, the common sense and reason of the circumstance and the actions represented; this reductio ad absurdum is very provoking, and seems very contradictory to the real genius of the actor; but I believe the fact to be that Signor Salvini plays an Italian version of lo," without knowing the English version. I am told he is unacquainted with the English language, and therefore is not aware of his departure from Shakespeare's ideal. He is a large man, with a heavy face, capable of much variety and intensity, of expression, and his chief qualification for his great tragic role is a truly wonderful voice. I have never heard anything approaching to it,_ in Compass, power, melody, and flexibility. His command over it is complete, and without the smallest effort he makes it render with exquisite effect every note in the gamut of human emotion. Signor Salvini's voice is so beautiful that it is a ' treat to listen to him with one's eyes shut, "when the calm, restrained power which he displays in the two first, acts: of the play are exchanged for a passionate violence, much more astonishing than pleasing, and which culminates in the most daring" innovation upon the text, and

upon custom, and in the most unpleasant exhibition which I have ever witnessed upon any stage. The Moor does not stab himself as' Shakespeare's Othello does; and fall^pn Desdemona's couch, with the touching last words which the student of human nature puts into the mouth of the remorseless murderer —

" I kissed thee ere I killed thee:—No way but this, Killing myself to die upon a kiss." Signor Salvini, having pronounced his message to the State, and especially his * " No more of that," with wondeful effect, and his denunciation of himself with all the abandonment of despair, comes to the famous passage in which Othello puts his hearers off their guard, and holding their attention by the recital of an exploitimaginary or otherwise matters nothing to the purpose—kills [himself before any can interfere. But at the lines, " I took by the throat the circumcised dog, And smote him—thus—" the Italian tragedian pulls out of his girdle a curved scimit var (conspicious in his dress in the first act) and hacks at his throat with 1 it, giving the action all the horrid effect of throat-cutting, and falls backwards on the stage in terribly realistic death-convulsions. .> The curtain falls on Ms quivering frame, with one leg extended and kicking like a dying rabbit. What could be more deplorable as bad art, and an appeal to the lowest taste, o f the increase and .prevalence.of which we have had several proofs recently ? The imp_res-. sion made by the close of the play is so disagreeable that it almost effaces the pleasure which the earlier scenes inspire, and one feels that one cannot part friends With Signor Salvini. 'r