Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 2, No. 58. Tuesday, 19 Feb 1991. Date: Tue, 19 Feb 91 13:04 EST From: <COX@HOPE> Subject: Music for Staging *Othello* I am responding specifically to Steve Urkowitz's query about music to accompany the shift from Venice to Cyprus. Last summer in England, I saw the television version of Trevor Nunn's *Othello*, which originated in The Other Place at Stratford upon Avon. It's a brilliant production, set in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, with Iago (played by Ian MacKellan [sp?]) and other soldiers as members of a Near Eastern colo- nial regiment, officered by a black man. Clearly little of this production will be of assistance to a setting of the play in 1500, but I did notice something about the background music in Cyprus: it alternated between evan- gelical hymns, played on a portable foot-pump organ, and sounds that I would describe as coming from the Islamic liturgy--a mullah's cry, for example. The mixture of popular religion from two different cultures was very effective as a way of distinguishing Cyprus from Venice. Perhaps something of the same effect could be achieved for an early-sixteenth-century setting. Cheers, John Cox Hope College