Editing Otello (section)

===Roles, their demands, and the singers who met them===
{{More citations needed section|date=April 2018}}
[[File:Romilda Pantaleoni by Ganzini circa 1875.jpg|thumb|Romilda Pantaleoni, the first Desdemona]]
Since the three leading roles of the opera ([[Othello (character)|Otello]], [[Desdemona]] and [[Iago]]) are among Verdi's most demanding, both vocally and dramatically, some of the most illustrious singers of the past 130 years have made ''Otello'' part of their repertoire. Famous Otellos of the past have included Tamagno, the role's trumpet-voiced creator, as well as [[Giovanni Battista De Negri]], Albert Alvarez, [[Francesc Viñas]], [[Giuseppe Borgatti]], [[Antonio Paoli]], [[Giovanni Zenatello]], [[Renato Zanelli]], [[Giovanni Martinelli]], [[Aureliano Pertile]], [[Francesco Merli]], [[Giacomo Lauri-Volpi]], [[Frank Mullings]], [[Leo Slezak]], Jose Luccioni, [[Ramón Vinay]], [[Mario Del Monaco]], [[James McCracken]], [[Jon Vickers]], [[David Rendall]], [[Jeffrey Lawton]] and [[Carlo Cossutta]]. Pre-[[Second World War]] [[Richard Wagner|Wagnerian]] tenors such as [[Jacques Urlus]], [[Heinrich Knote]], Alexander Kirchner, [[Lauritz Melchior]] and [[Franz Völker]] also undertook the part (usually singing it in German). The Russian heroic tenor [[Ivan Yershov]] was a renowned pre-[[World War I]] Otello in his native country. His compatriot [[Arnold Azrikan]] achieved his greatest recognition as a dramatic tenor in Otello. For this performance he was awarded the [[State Stalin Prize|Stalin Prize]] in 1946.
[[Enrico Caruso]] was studying ''Otello'' when he died unexpectedly in 1921, thus thwarting the New York [[Metropolitan Opera]] company's plans to stage the opera as a new vehicle for its star tenor.

Currently, [[Plácido Domingo]] has appeared in more video productions of the opera than any other tenor.<ref>See [[Otello discography]]</ref> Also, he has recorded the complete role several times on CD and appeared in numerous stage productions of the work on both sides of the Atlantic. In his book ''My First Forty Years'', Domingo has written about different approaches over the years towards singing the role of Otello:<blockquote>
As to the other question — that of singing roles that, according to self-proclaimed experts, we ought not to be singing — I have a little story to tell. When I decided to sing Otello, many people told me that I was crazy. Mario Del Monaco, they said, had had the proper kind of voice for the role, and my voice was nothing like his. Twenty years earlier, Del Monaco had been warned not to sing Otello because his voice was nothing like that of Ramon Vinay, who was then performing the opera all over the world. Vinay, of course, had heard that only a tenor with a piercing sound like Giovanni Martinelli's ought to sing the part. Some years earlier, Martinelli had had Antonin Trantoul, who had sung Otello at La Scala in the twenties, held up to him as a shining example; but at La Scala, those who still remembered the very first Otello, Francesco Tamagno, had found Trantoul completely unsatisfactory. But there exists a letter from Verdi to his publisher in which the composer makes it quite clear that Tamagno left a great deal to be desired.{{sfn|Domingo|1993|p=127}}</blockquote>

A long lineage of renowned baritones have sung Iago since 1887. Among them: Victor Maurel (the role's first exponent), [[Mattia Battistini]], [[Mario Ancona]], [[Antonio Scotti]], [[Titta Ruffo]], [[Pasquale Amato]], [[Carlo Galeffi]] and [[Lawrence Tibbett]]. Leading post-war exponents of the part have included Giuseppe Valdengo, [[Leonard Warren]], [[Robert Merrill]], [[Tito Gobbi]], [[Sherrill Milnes]], [[Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau]] and [[James Morris (bass-baritone)|James Morris]]. Many lyric sopranos have also sung the role of Desdemona since 1887, including [[Renata Tebaldi]] (1954), [[Leonie Rysanek]] (1960), [[Gwyneth Jones (soprano)|Gwyneth Jones]] (1968), [[Mirella Freni]] (1974), [[Kiri Te Kanawa]] (1974), [[Margaret Price]] (1977), [[Renata Scotto]] (1978), [[Katia Ricciarelli]] (1985), [[Cheryl Studer]] (1993), [[Renée Fleming]] (1996) and [[Sonya Yoncheva]] (2015).