A storm opens the evening and immediately exposes everything. In Otello, Giuseppe Verdi tells of a love that comes under pressure, of power, manipulation and the destructive power of distrust. At the centre is the celebrated hero Otello, who slowly loses his grip. Jago, brilliant and ruthless, deliberately sows doubt: words become weapons, proximity becomes threat. Verdi's music propels that dynamic inexorably: uncompromising, emotional and of haunting intensity.

Otello is perhaps Verdi's most radical musical drama. In this penultimate opera, premiered at La Scala in Milan in 1887, the composer condenses Shakespeare's tragedy into a psychological chamber piece, with a score that abandons external splendour and focuses entirely on inner chasms. The traditional number opera gives way to a through-composed drama, in which eruptive outbursts and fragile silences reinforce each other. The famous storm at the beginning is no mere effect, but a harbinger of inner chaos that does not calm down until the tragic end. Otello is opera as existential confrontation: uncompromising, modern and undiminished.