TV OPERA REVIEW : ‘OTELLO’ ON ‘GREAT PERFORMANCES’

It is no doubt sheer coincidence that PBS is telecasting Herbert von Karajan’s problematic 13-year-old film of Verdi’s “Otello” only a few months after Franco Zeffirelli’s problematic big-screen version of the same opera was released in this country. Even so, the productions complement one another in significant ways.

Scheduled to be shown on the “Great Performances” series tonight at 8 on Channel 24 and at 9 on Channels 28 and 15--with stereo simulcasts on KUSC (91.5) and KCPB (91.1)--Karajan’s 2 1/2-hour Salzburg Festival “Otello” will also be seen on Saturday at 8 p.m. on Channel 50.

Those who know the opera only from the Zeffirelli film may need to quash some of their more lurid expectations. This time, for instance, there are no crude, interpolated ballets. Cassio (the very callow, sweet-voiced Aldo Bottion) has no nude scene and Iago (the rather blustery and none-too-subtle Peter Glossop) is not speared to death in the manner of “Friday the 13th” horror movies. No great loss.

Otello himself (the heroic, sensitive Jon Vickers) no longer lives in a fortress that looks much, much bigger inside than outside. Finally, Desdemona (the poignant Mirella Freni) manages to sing both Verdi’s “Ave Maria” and the Willow Song (one of Zeffirelli’s major cuts) without derailing the drama.

Indeed these sustained passages of lyric anguish, so affectingly sung, make the tragic violence that follows even more devastating--as Verdi intended. He knew best and, much of the time, director/conductor Karajan respects his wishes.

Karajan draws playing of great power and majesty from the Berlin Philharmonic, plus tolerably Italianate singing from his Deutsche Oper chorus. However, after a spectacularly cinematic opening sequence--with as much wind and water as Zeffirelli mustered and far more musically astute film editing--he tends to reduce the opera’s volcanic confrontations to static poses or stagy groupings.

Partly due to Karajan’s penchant for shots of overlapping profiles, his Otello and Desdemona seem oddly passive in their declarations of love and Vickers also sounds less persuasive in this intimate music than he did in the 1978 “Live From the Met” telecast on PBS.

Worse, Georges Wakhevitch’s bright, cheery settings undercut the music and drama disastrously. Zeffirelli shot Iago’s malignant, “Credo” aria in a subterranean vault: appropriate for a revelation of buried evil. But Karajan has Glossop stalking through a sunlit, seaside patio-garden that would be a perfect environment for Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte.” It doesn’t play.

Where Zeffirelli’s “Otello” arguably fails through overweening ambition and appalling taste, Karajan’s failure is a matter of many unfortunate choices, inconsistencies and lapses. Each film offers a muddled vision of a masterpiece.