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12/10/2018
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...and it's not a drama
A perfumistic colossal painting like Verdi's opera is not this scent for me personally. I expected more passionate force, but at first I only got a tender sensation of light citrus, not an overstraining attack, but a conventionally looking introduction. Soon the composition becomes more exciting. Sage and vetiver. These two fit in well with the background already indicated, although from a stylistic point of view they do not, of course, represent a monumental pose that I would have expected from a perfume called Othello, but rather a calm, lyrical narrative.
Verdi's opera thrives on great contrasts: Passion versus tenderness, monumentality versus lyricism. This contrast is not recorded in the perfume.
Silvana Casoli's Othello is an excellent fragrance, but it lacks the wild substance that would make an Othello for my taste. Only the base I find a little more interesting than the rest with lots of incense, fine sprinkles of oudh, light honey. Everything stays neat and quiet, yes, beautiful! Unfortunately, no wildness or stylized malice is worked into the fragrance here either, because the line already hinted at in the top note is maintained. No tantrums, no waves of passion. No weapon, no resistance to Iago, the real bad guy in history! On stage, Othello chases a dagger into his own stomach in most productions.
The Othello perfume, on the other hand, is very unspectacular. It has no force, but seems to have been composed with the self-evident routine of an experienced perfumer. It is partly a little grey-in-grey. Although it is intelligently made, but somehow too little sinister or shocking.
Whether a perfume company would do well to olfactorily implement all classic operas is a question I often ask myself with creations like Othello. By starting off in such a cultivated conventional-classical way, the fragrance opens up a great height of fall. But in the further course this is not sufficiently used. As a black outsider, Othello is cleverly manipulated by Jago. You can't feel this tragedy in the scent.
Maybe a perfume can't even reflect the depth of the music. Maybe it shouldn't refer to Shakespeare or Verdi. Maybe it should just be No. 38. Or No. 3. Or somehow, somehow not so terribly programmatic.
Verdi's opera thrives on great contrasts: Passion versus tenderness, monumentality versus lyricism. This contrast is not recorded in the perfume.
Silvana Casoli's Othello is an excellent fragrance, but it lacks the wild substance that would make an Othello for my taste. Only the base I find a little more interesting than the rest with lots of incense, fine sprinkles of oudh, light honey. Everything stays neat and quiet, yes, beautiful! Unfortunately, no wildness or stylized malice is worked into the fragrance here either, because the line already hinted at in the top note is maintained. No tantrums, no waves of passion. No weapon, no resistance to Iago, the real bad guy in history! On stage, Othello chases a dagger into his own stomach in most productions.
The Othello perfume, on the other hand, is very unspectacular. It has no force, but seems to have been composed with the self-evident routine of an experienced perfumer. It is partly a little grey-in-grey. Although it is intelligently made, but somehow too little sinister or shocking.
Whether a perfume company would do well to olfactorily implement all classic operas is a question I often ask myself with creations like Othello. By starting off in such a cultivated conventional-classical way, the fragrance opens up a great height of fall. But in the further course this is not sufficiently used. As a black outsider, Othello is cleverly manipulated by Jago. You can't feel this tragedy in the scent.
Maybe a perfume can't even reflect the depth of the music. Maybe it shouldn't refer to Shakespeare or Verdi. Maybe it should just be No. 38. Or No. 3. Or somehow, somehow not so terribly programmatic.
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