Othello, the foreigner and outsider, seems to have been showered with blessings - a brilliant military career and a beautiful wife from a respected family, who is confident and loving in her support of him. And yet it is Jago, one of Othello's inner circle of confidants, who hatches a lethal scheme to bring him down. Utterly without scruple, he exploits the greed and weakness of people, manipulates them and sets in train a series of events steeped in corruption and mistrust and culminating in Othello killing his beloved Desdemona, who he is convinced has been unfaithful to him. Many hold this brilliant work, completed late in Verdi's career, to be superior to Shakespeare's original. It is considered the greatest Italian tragic opera of the 19th century and a triumphal response on the part of Italian art to the gathering German predominance.