OTELLO
SCRIPT, DESIGN + DIRECTION: BRETT BAILEY
MUSICAL COMPOSITION: FABRIZIO CASSOL,
ADAPTED FROM THE VERDI
CHORAL ARRANGEMENTS: BONGANI MAGATYANA
CONDUCTOR: PREMIL PETROVIC
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR + FUNDRAISER:
VONGANI BAVULA
We are currently seeking presenters and co-producers for this project.
'Everything in this world is eater or eaten.
The seed is food and the fire is eater.'
W.B. Yeats, from The Upanishads
Brett is once again teaming up with Belgian composer Fabrizio Cassol and Berlin-based Serbian conductor Premil Petrovic, to create a radical take on Verdi’s operatic masterpiece, OTELLO. This follows their critically acclaimed and highly successful adaptation of Verdi’s MACBETH. Joining them are award-winning South African choral arranger Bongani Magatyana, and Germany-based South African tenor/director Vongani Bavula, who will assist Brett. The intended premiere is in mid-2026.
A world on fire... Verdi’s dark masterpiece of control, deception and jealousy, entangled with the fracturing of our world – political, social, environmental – in the 21st century. An iconoclastic, fast-paced, apocalyptic adaptation, tightly focussed on the dynamics of agony, rage and cruelty that ricochet amongst the 3 main characters.
Brett has edited Verdi’s work down to focus on the 3 main protagonists and is rewriting the libretto. Fabrizio is rescoring the music for 6 singers and 10 musicians, with the inclusion of African percussion. The work is set in a contemporary society in the global south, which is negotiating conflict, intercultural strain and ecological stress.
Thematically, Brett's interest lies less in Otello's racial otherness and more in exploring the tension between the vision of tolerance and peace embodied by the cross-cultural relationship between the lovers, and the motives of those who benefit from strife and chaos and seek to undermine such a vision.
This OTELLO aims a lens at xenophobia, misogyny, domestic violence and disinformation. It probes themes of (a)morality, entropy, trauma and healing. As in all of Brett's works, strong visual design is employed as a narrative device.
Fabrizio's is a slow and painstaking process, considering the complexity of the composition, the vastly reduced company, and the need to create musical bridges where cuts have been made. Premil, the artistic director of the Balkans-based No Borders Orchestra, will conduct. Musicians will be a mix of South Africans and Europeans.