The new ‘Othello Music’: From the play text to opera, diegetic/non-diegetic soundtracks and popular music allusions

This article critically examines the relationship between Othello and music, from the play text to opera, popular music allusions, and diegetic and non-diegetic soundtracks, analysing its adaptability/inadaptability in various contexts, with a focus on the issue of race. It does this through the lenses of adaptation studies and the singular history that adaptations of Shakespeare’s work have. The central question addressed is: what do musical adaptations reveal about the adaptability of the play? What this article aims to achieve – and that which has not been undertaken previously – is to expand the lines of analysis from G. Wilson Knight’s conception of the ‘The Othello music’ to sustained consideration of musical adaptations across periods and media, combining a discussion of the Moor’s ‘musicality’ with re-representations of race, deducing whether or not it sits as uneasily in musical forms as it does in screen adaptations.