Santiago Matamoros and Shakespeare

[Rosina Lila]

Hi Robert,
The vagaries of the Italian language are as intriguing and challenging as
they are fascinating.  There seems to be a consistency, however, in the
mutations and transmutations within words, particularly first names.
Giovanni, for instance, is often reduced to Gianni (as in the opera Gianni
Schichi), and Giacomo (James) was frequently reduced to Giaco in the Middle
Ages. With the infusion of northern Europeans and their more guttural
languages many sounds in Italian changed from a hard "k" to a soft "g", an
influence that perdures to this day: what used to be "secreto" became, and
remains, segreto, and so on.  Giaco became Giago and eventually just Iago.
After the immense popularity of Verdi's opera Otello, wherein Iago is shown
as a perfectly hateful fellow, the use of Iago as a first name virtually
disappeared in Italy.
Incidentally, Verdi, who was about eightly years old when he wrote Otello,
and pretty soured on human goodness, originally wanted to call his opera Iago
because he was enthralled  by  the unadulterated badness of the man.  It fell
to the libretto's author, the much younger Arrigo Boito   -himself a very
gifted opera composer... his opera Mefistofele is a great favorite of mine;
sadly his "leftist" political views fell afoul of the powers that be and his
career as a composer came to a regretful end all too soon-  to convince the
old glorious maestro that glorifying badness may distance his music from the
general public, and the opera was finally named Otello.
The correspondence maintained between Verdi and Boito while they were working
on the opera with Verdi's music publishers in  Milano,  Casa Ricordi,
frequently refers both to Cinthio's novella and to the Iago-Santiago
connection, and even expresses concern about possibly offending Spanish opera
audiences, a concern that was assuaged by Boito's pointing out the enormous
popularity of the Shakespeare's Othello play in Spain.
Affectionate regards,
Rosina