Otello discography

This is a list of audio and video recordings (discography) of Giuseppe Verdi's 1887 opera Otello.

Recordings of excerpts, i.e., individual arias, duets and scenes from Otello, are not included. Many such recordings of celebrated tenors, baritones and sopranos have been reissued on CD and make for fascinating comparative listening. Recordings made in the early 1900s by the creators of the roles of Otello and Iago, namely Francesco Tamagno and Victor Maurel, are among those now available in digital formats.

In 1969, the English music critic Harold Rosenthal contended that among recordings of the complete opera, a 1947 recording of an NBC radio broadcast of the opera conducted by Arturo Toscanini and featuring singers Herva Nelli, Ramón Vinay and Giuseppe Valdengo, was musically one the best of the available versions.^[1] RCA Victor has issued the Toscanini recording several times on commercial LPs and on CD in digitally remastered form. In addition, performances of Otello were captured live as early as the 1920s (at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London) and the 1930s (at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City, the latter via the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts). They, too, are available on CD reissues.