Otello

I've been to see Verdi's Otello and very fine it was too. It's a proper opera: good tunes and it ends badly. More verismo than bel canto of course, but none the worse for that. Operatic heroines have a habit of singing the strongest just as they expire from some dread disease - usually consumption. Desdemona (apparently pronounced in Italian with the stress on the second syllable) goes one better by singing on after she's actually dead.

So what's that got to do with wargaming? (Do I detect a rhetorical question creeping back in there? And a second? Or third? etc ad nauseam). Nothing much, although Shakespeare's Othello is supposed to be a successful general. Boito's libretto makes him out to be a complete numpty so it's a mystery how he got to win any battles. Presumably the Turkish generals were even worse.