Most operas are lucky to have one star tenor. Opera Philadelphia’s ‘Otello’ has three.

Towering, heroic but stricken with jealousy, the mythical stage character Otello might seem too anguished to hit numerous high notes — at least in the operatic persona famously created by Verdi, adapted from Shakespeare. But Rossini’s little-known Otello that Opera Philadelphia opens on Friday — the centerpiece of its Sept. 21-Oct. 3 Festival O22 — takes an alternate route in its story of the Venetian army general who is destroyed by suspicions of his wife’s infidelity.

Best known for breezy comedies, Rossini convincingly raged with an extravagant density of notes in a story that exposes Venetian ruling class as a place where women are treated like property, marriage consolidates political power, and military heroes are expect to know their place.

Then there’s the casting: Most operas require one star tenor; this one needs three, for the characters of Otello, Rodrigo and Iago.”

“Opera Philadelphia is so brave to put on this Rossini Otello,” declared stage director Emilio Sagi, who originated the 022 production in Liege that sets the opera in 1920s Europe to emphasize the class hierarchy. “The voices also have to be very good actors. Otherwise, you can’t do this opera.”

In the company’s first live fall festival since 2019, general director and president David Devan says it will have an overall theme of virtuosity, whether the ornate but intense vocalism in Otello at the Academy of Music, the theatrical immersion of Toshio Hosokawa’s The Raven at the Miller Theater, the surreal sortie into the mind of a tormented writer in the David T. Little/Anne Waldman opera Black Lodge featuring Timur & the Dime Museum at the Philadelphia Film Center, which is also hosting the genre-stretching films in a six-day opera-centric series.

“As we recover from this lockdown period, I think we need to lean into the virtuosity of opera in all of its forms,” said Devan, “to give us a reason to leave the house, and be with others in an artistic experience.”

Otello was spearheaded by artistic advisor Lawrence Brownlee, the star tenor whose repertoire now includes 15 Rossini roles. Throughout Europe, he has been offered Otello, the title role requiring a tenor-range agility but baritone undertones. That’s not Brownlee. A far-better vocal fit is Rodrigo, Otello’s romantic rival for the hand of Desdemona. Brownlee has wanted to sing it for years.

But the first task was finding the right Otello. Through his European contacts, Brownlee was introduced to the little-known, 33-year-old South African tenor Khanyiso Gwenxane who had sung the Rossini Otello in a small theater in Germany. They met in Zurich where Brownlee was singing, worked through the opera together and had a Zoom meeting with Opera Philadelphia music director Corrado Rovaris (a Rossini specialist). The Philadelphia production is Gwenxane’s U.S. debut.

“This is my first big Rossini role. It’s outside my realm,” he said. “Among tenors, we have a saying: If Jose Carreras, Bruce Ford and Nicolai Gedda can do it, you can do it — if you’re on the right track. And this is something that I can do as well.”

Though the Otello cast is multiracial, having two Black tenors in the same productions is unusual. (Opera Philadelphia has long championed color-blind casting, and has made efforts to hire Black performers.)

The casting allows for a deeper dive into the opera’s class distinctions. How will the opera play when Brownlee’s Black Rodrigo insults Gwenxane’s Moorish Otello for thinking that he could marry the white, aristocratic Desdemona?

Devan had the team to examine the cultural baggage associated with this famous character. “Shakespeare is painful to watch,” said Gwenxane, referring to some of the play’s coarse but often-cut dialogue. “The Verdi opera is not pleasant at all. At first you kind of take it personally. But this is how they referred to Black people at that time, now and into the future. I have to navigate such things every day. In opera, you think you’re going to have an escape from it, but you don’t. It gets difficult for everyone. But I’m trying to raise awareness, and this is a part I can play by doing this.”

The revelation for Brownlee is that the 1816 Rossini opera — which falls between Shakespeare’s 1603 Othello and Verdi’s 1887 operatic adaptation — lacks explicit references to skin color. But Otello laments about his appearance (“My aspect and costume are so different…”). Elsewhere, he is condescendingly referred to as “The African.”

But not all Africans are Black, said Brownlee, especially in the 1920s milieu in which the opera has been reimagined. Thus, the opera’s core emotional axis is Otello and Rodrigo vying for Desdemona — in a clash between the aristocracy and military class. The usually racist Iago, also a tenor in this version, is a lesser presence. “It’s more about this person (Otello) being from a different tradition,” said Brownlee. “We have to make it about the characters in order to make it a believable, credible story. We have to take hold of the narrative.”

Gwenxane is on board with that: “If we play it by race it wouldn’t make sense this time. For me, it’s all who has more influence in society.”

“I’m very happy to do it like that,” said director Sagi, who was waylaid by visa problems and could only advise from his home in Spain. “When you have big characters, big singers, big actors, it [externals] doesn’t matter at all.”

It’s possible that Rossini librettist Francesco Berio de Salsa knew Shakespeare’s original source material but was blissfully unaware of Shakespeare. Rossini’s world, after all, wasn’t one of deeply considered dramaturgy. Operas were assembled in weeks — not years, as in current times — often with recycled music from past operas. Was Rossini a proto-feminist by making Desdemona (sung here by Daniela Mack) far more substantial than the tragic trophy wife of other versions? Not likely. It just came out that way.

Certainly, the opera takes on extra dramatic weight by having recitative accompanied by orchestra rather than keyboard. And Rossini’s third-act murder of Desdemona is one of those operatic eruptions that arrives like a bolt out of the blue. The composer seems possessed; director Sagi describes it more as theater than music.

Will this Otello be the defining production of Festival O22? Devan observes that each festival has had a mind of its own in terms of acclaim and popularity. The Raven isn’t a new piece, but the equity that comes with its Edgar Allan Poe origins plus the promise of theatrical innovation has already yielded sold-out performances. Black Lodge — a cinema piece that now has a combination of film and live elements — is close to selling out.

With a $2.4 million budget, the festival is smaller than past years in some ways, but bigger in others. Opera on the Mall (a populist-oriented opera screening at Independence Hall) is absent, pending a new approach in future years when Devan envisions multiple opera screenings in different neighborhoods. In contrast, the new opera on film series attracted 800 entries that had to be narrowed down to 20. Classics such as the 1979 Joseph Losey-directed Don Giovanni and the 2001 Carmen: A Hip Hopera starring Beyoncé are mixed in with more indie-style films. Devan even talks about future years being “the Sundance of opera films.”

The only predictable element is the life-and-death stakes that are so endemic to the operatic genre. Don Giovanni literally goes to hell. Otello dies from guilt. Always, the journey is the thing. And to make sure that Otello’s journey happens the way it should, the all-but-indispensible Gwenxane is guarding against any possible COVID infection.

“I rehearse,” he said, “and I hibernate.”

Festival 022 schedule: The Raven: Sept. 21, 24, 29 and Oct. 1, Miller Theatre, all performances are sold out. Otello: Sept. 23, 25, 30, Oct. 2, Academy of Music, $25-299. Afternoons at Academy of Vocal Arts: Sept. 24 (featuring André Courville) and Oct. 1 (featuring Latonia Moore), 1920 Spruce St., sold out. Black Lodge: Oct. 1 and 2, Philadelphia Film Center, $25. Opera on Film: Sept. 27-Oct. 4, Philadelphia Film Center, entire series $25. Late Night Snacks including the Bearded Ladies Cabaret: Sept. 21-25 and Sept. 28-Oct. 4 at The Switch, 421 N. 7th St., pay what you can. www.operphila.org, 215-732-8400.