The scheme works beautifully. The fight begins, Montano, a local official, tries to make peace and is wounded. The uproar wakes Otello who arrives, holds Cassio responsible and demotes him, just as Iago planned. Otello is sensitive to his situation — a Black man and a Muslim who converted to Christianity and married a Venetian noblewoman. Desdemona calms his worries. Together they recall their first love and Desdemona prays it lasts forever.

Act II

Iago continues his evil mind game. He tells Cassio, miserable over his demotion, that Desdemona could intercede with her husband on his behalf. Alone, Iago muses about the banality of existence. His goal in life is simple: To manipulate people for the sake of evil. Cassio, following Iago's advice, talks to Desdemona as Otello enters. Iago nods toward the couple and suggests to Otello, ever so delicately, that the two are lovers.

Doubt of his wife's fidelity now planted in his mind, Otello insists he needs proof. He grows angry when his wife pleads Cassio's case. She tries to placate him with an embroidered linen handkerchief, a wedding gift from her husband, but Otello angrily grabs the handkerchief and tosses it to the ground. Emilia, Iago's wife and Desdemona's servant, picks up the handkerchief but Iago grabs it from her, realizing its future value in his ongoing scheme.

That opportunity comes quickly. He invents a story, telling Otello he heard Cassio having an erotic dream about Desdemona and saw the beloved handkerchief in his hand. That's enough for Otello. He rages and, with Iago, swears an oath of vengeance.

Act III

Iago tells Otello to stand by for yet more evidence of Cassio's betrayal. Desdemona joins her husband and once again brings up Cassio's case. Otello, exasperated, says he has a raging headache and needs her handkerchief to sooth his brow. She hands him one but it's not the wedding handkerchief. Enraged, Otello calls her a whore.

Iago starts a boys-will-be-boys conversation with Cassio, asking him about his mistress, Bianca. He makes sure Otello is eavesdropping on the sexy conversation but that the general is far enough away that he can only hear fragments. Otello listens and assumes Cassio's earthy words are describing Desdemona. At one point, Cassio shows Iago a fancy embroidered handkerchief that he says he found in his room. It is, of course, the wedding handkerchief that Iago planted earlier in Cassio's room.

For Otello, it's case closed. He vows to kill Desdemona. Iago tells him suffocating his wife in bed is the way to do it and adds that he'll take care of Cassio.

Surprise! A delegation from Venice arrives with a proclamation from the Doge, ordering Otello home with a promotion and appointing Cassio the new governor of Cyprus. Otello's anger boils over. He humiliates his wife in front of the crowd and sags to the ground in a mix of rage and grief. “Lion of Venice!” cry citizens outside the walls. Iago, triumphant, gloats over Otello's collapsed body. “Behold the lion!” he sneers.

Act IV

At nightfall, Desdemona prepares for bed. She tells Emilia that her mother's maid used to sing the Willow Song, a woeful melody that describes a young girl jilted by her lover. Otello enters, wakes his sleeping wife with a kiss and tells her she must die because of her love for Cassio. Desdemona, shocked at the false charge, says it's not true and that Cassio will verify her innocence. Too late, Otello says, he's dead. And Otello proceeds to strangle Desdemona.

Emilia enters with surprising news. Cassio's alive and has killed Roderigo. With his dying breath, Roderigo revealed Iago's plot. Emilia adds that Iago stole the wedding handkerchief from her and planted it in Cassio's room. Iago knows he's been found out and flees, pursued by guards. Otello, for the first time, understands his own guilt. He draws a dagger, plunges it into his chest, drags himself to Desdemona's body, kisses her, and dies.

- Performance notes by Eugene Carlson

Verdi's 26 operas, written over 54 years, was an unstoppable outpouring of musical genius. It formed a bridge between the florid bel canto operas of Bellini, Donizetti and Rossini and the true-to-life verismo works of Puccini.

Verdi was born in 1813 in the small northern Italian village of Roncole, near Parma, to a family of modest means. He owed his musical education in Milan to financial support from the man who became his father-in-law. His early life was difficult and sad. His two infant children died, then his wife, all within two years. His first opera was a modest success, the second one bombed, and a depressed Verdi was on the verge of quitting the business.

To the rescue came the director of La Scala, the Milan opera house, who offered Verdi a commission plus an introduction to Giuseppina Strepponi, a well-known diva. The result was Nabucco. It debuted in 1842 with Strepponi in the cast. The opera was a hit and Verdi and Strepponi became companions and eventually married.

Nabucco's story of the exile of the Jews from Babylon struck a patriotic chord at the time of Italy's struggle to unify. Over the years, the solemn chorus “Va, pensiero,” or “The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves” from Act III, took on a nostalgic life of its own. Many Italians know it by heart and it's often sung at large gatherings. It was a serious contender at one point to be Italy's national anthem.

Nabucco cemented Verdi's reputation as both a composer and a passionate patriot. His name even became a shouted slogan of national unity: “Viva VERDI,” the last word an unsubtle acronym for Victor Emmanuel II, the soon to be Italian king. Verdi served briefly in Italy's first parliament. He was irascible by nature and the candid political views that crept into his operas was, on occasion, reined in by censors.

The Rigoletto story, for example, was originally set in France with King Francis I cast as the licentious lead character. A debauched European monarch and other sketchy elements of the story was embarrassing to Italy's officials so King Francis was transformed as a cast character into the Duke of Mantua, ruler of a minor Italian duchy.

Similarly, the murder of Sweden's King Gustav III was the original centerpiece of Un ballo in maschera until Verdi was persuaded to switch the venue from Stockholm to colonial New England and invent a new fictional character to assassinate — Riccardo, the governor of Boston! The solution to avoid offending the Swedes was ludicrous and later productions fortunately reverted to the original Swedish venue and monarch.

Some critics, their biases lodged in the 18th century when plots were typically frothy with happy endings, found Verdi's works melodramatic and a bit crude. In Verdi operas, to be sure, there's usually a dead body or two lying on stage as the curtain falls.

But who cares. Just look at the roll call of his opera hits: Luisa Miller, Il Trovatore, La Traviata, Simon Boccanegra, Macbeth, Don Carlos, La Forza del Destino and the operatic spectacular of them all, Aida. Add to this the magnificent Requiem written in 1874 in memory of the novelist Alessandro Manzoni. A staple in the repertoire of every serious chorale.

To end his career on the highest possible note, Verdi came out of semi-retirement and leaned on his love of Shakespeare to compose perhaps his greatest tragic opera, Otello. This was followed five years later by the rollicking Falstaff. La Scala's ticket prices went through the roof for Falstaff's debut and audience applause and “bravos” at the curtain reportedly lasted an hour.

Verdi lived to the dawn of the 20th century. He died of a stroke in 1901, at age 87. He had created a retirement home for musicians in Milan, Casa di Riposo, and his grave is there, next to Giuseppina, his beloved companion of 50 years. Italy wept at his death. At his funeral, Arturo Toscanini conducted a combined symphony and chorus. An estimated 200,000 crowded the streets of Milan and, as if on cue, softly sang “Va, pensiero.”

- Performance notes by Eugene Carlson

Fortunately for posterity, the music world wasn't through with Verdi. The key to reigniting the composer's energy was, surprisingly, his passion for Shakespeare. Verdi didn't know English but fell for The Bard in his youth and read his works in Italian translation throughout his life. “The great searcher of the human heart,” Verdi called him.

Verdi had paid his respects nearly 30 years earlier with a successful operatic version of Macbeth. Now his publisher pressured Verdi to come out of retirement and collaborate with the brilliant and flamboyant Arrigo Boito, Italy's foremost Shakespeare expert, on an Otello libretto. After ironing out personal and age differences — Boito was 30 years younger than Verdi — and working together on a successful revision of an earlier Verdi opera, Simon Boccanegra, the two men agreed to pursue the Otello project together.

But there was a complication. Gioacchino Rossini, Verdi's famous predecessor, had composed an opera on that story nearly 60 years earlier. Rossini's Otello was a great success, translated into a half-dozen languages, and was regularly performed throughout Europe in Verdi's lifetime. It was not, however, based directly on Shakespeare's work but on a sketchy French variation.

That was enough of an opening for Boito. He cut Shakespeare's play in two, omitting the first half in Venice and focusing on a few critical hours in Otello's role as the governor of Cyprus. He condensed Shakespeare's Elizabethan prose into language that could be sung. And in a bold gesture, Boito wrote a soliloquy in which Iago spells out the venomous elements of his evil personality; his belief that God is cruel and that people are simply fools to be manipulated. Verdi loved Boito's idea of an anti-religious creed and set it to music. The Credo at the top of Act II solidifies the role of the sociopathic Iago for the audience. Memorable and wickedly difficult to sing, the Credo is high on the performance wish list of every baritone.

Verdi was hooked but still he dithered and the project dragged on for two and a half years. At one point, he and Boito thought about calling their work Jago (Italian for Iago) to differentiate it from Rossini's still popular Otello, but scrapped the idea and opted for the Otello title as well.

Finally, 16 years after Aida's premier, Otello debuted at Milan's La Scala on Feb. 5, 1887. To say it was an instant box office smash is to understate the public response by half.

“He (Verdi) was called out 20 times.” wrote the American singer Blanche Roosevelt, who was in the opening night audience. “The emotion was something indescribable and many wept. Verdi's carriage was dragged by citizens to the hotel. At five in the morning, I had not closed my eyes in sleep for the crowds still singing and shrieking 'Viva Verdi'.”

Verdi, now 73, and Boito had produced a masterwork but a marked departure from the traditional format of Italian opera where arias, duets and quartets are the highlights, written for applause. To be sure, Otello has important set pieces: The “Esultate,” Otello's brief but spectacular Act I entrance; a Drinking Song; a tender Otello-Desdemona duet, and a couple of complex ensembles. Desdemona's Willow Song in Act IV, a folk song derived from Shakespeare, recalls the death of a young woman abandoned by her lover and foreshadow's Desdemona's impending demise.

But in Otello, for the first time, Verdi liberated the orchestra from the role of vocal accompanist. He tilted the balance from singers to an orchestra in overdrive, propelling the plot. The voice is still supreme but set pieces arrive, says critic Denis Forman, “like islands in a stormy sea of music.”

Otello was revolutionary and is widely regarded as the greatest of all Verdi operas. Yet in the present day, it's far less performed — chiefly because of the mere handful of tenors able to sing the demanding lead role — so far less popular at the box office than such traditional Verdi hits as Rigoletto, La Traviata and Aida. An unusual niche for a magnificent work, and lucky are the audiences that get to experience this masterpiece.

- Performance notes by Eugene Carlson