I've completed a new Italian–English edition of Giuseppe Verdi's Otello, with a libretto by Arrigo Boito based on William Shakespeare's tragedy Othello.
The work involved a detailed review of the Italian text and the existing English translation, corrections to transcription and translation errors, and preparation of a new side-by-side paperback. The book, Otello: Side-by-Side Italian–English Opera Libretto, is now published on Amazon.
First performed at La Scala in Milan on February 5, 1887, Otello was Verdi's penultimate opera. Boito's language moves from the tenderness of the opening love duet to Iago's calculated deception and Otello's final despair. Preparing the text revealed how much even a small correction can matter in such a tightly constructed drama.
Read and explore:
German and French translations of Otello are also available in side-by-side format.
Revisiting the Italian Text
The Italian libretto needed a careful review for transcription errors, punctuation, accents, and inconsistencies introduced during earlier preparation.
Some mistakes were small but changed the words themselves. In Act III, Otello describes the mysterious handkerchief and the magic associated with it. The phrase Io stame arcano was corrected to lo stame arcano — a simple confusion between a capital I and a lowercase l.
Another correction came near the end of the opera, in Otello's final words. The incorrect ti bacai was replaced with ti baciai:
Pria d'ucciderti... sposa... ti baciai.
I also standardized Italian accents and corrected several grammatical and typographical errors. At the same time, I tried to preserve Boito's poetic language. Older expressions and unusual constructions are not necessarily mistakes, and editing an opera libretto should not mean rewriting it into modern conversational Italian.
Reviewing the English Translation
The existing English translation also received a detailed review. Some corrections were grammatical, while others restored meanings that had become distorted.
One example occurs when Iago addresses Roderigo:
Ahi stolto! stolto!
The earlier English wording, "Ah stupidity! Stupidity!", missed the fact that Iago is calling Roderigo a fool. The revised translation reads:
Ah, fool! Fool!
In Otello's great Act III lament, Dio! mi potevi scagliar, the translation of m'han rapito il miraggio was missing its main verb. The corrected wording, "they have robbed me of that vision", restores the sentence and clarifies Otello's sense of irreparable loss.
Stage directions also required attention. For example, a Cassio, indicando il fazzoletto means "to Cassio, indicating the handkerchief". An earlier translation referred instead to Iago eyeing Cassio, changing the action described by Boito.
These are not merely stylistic differences. A side-by-side edition allows readers to compare the two languages directly, so the English needs to follow the original as closely and clearly as possible.
Preparing the New Paperback
The final stage was preparing the text for print.
The libretto is organized into five tables — the character list and the four acts — with Italian on the left and English on the right. Long stage directions needed particular attention because differences in line wrapping could disrupt the alignment between the columns.
I also reviewed character names, speaker labels, repetition indications, punctuation, and typography. Throughout the English text, I standardized the name Otello rather than alternating between Verdi's Italian title and Shakespeare's Othello. The Italian retains Jago, while the English uses Iago.
For the book, I also created a new illustration inspired by historical opera artwork and prepared a grayscale version for the printed interior.
Working on Otello was a reminder that even a familiar opera can contain many small textual questions. The aim of this edition is to make Boito's words easier to follow, while preserving the language and dramatic character of Verdi's opera.
— Dmitrii Murashev
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