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Plácido Domingo
Tenor
By now he has sung 122 different roles, more than any other tenor in the annals of music, with at least two more new roles planned in the next three seasons. His repertoire spans the gamut from Mozart to Verdi, from Berlioz to Puccini, from Wagner to Ginastera. He sings in every important Opera House in the world and has made well over 100 recordings of which 98 are full-length operas, often recording the same role more than once, and for which he has earned 9 Grammys and 2 Grammys in the newly established Latin Division. He has made more than 50 videos and 3 theatrically-released films which are Zeffirelli’s “Traviata” and “Otello” and Francesco Rosi’s “Carmen”. His telecast of “Tosca”, in the authentic settings in Rome, was seen by more than 1 billion people in 117 different countries. When he opened the 1999/2000 Metropolitan Opera season with “Pagliacci” he sang his 18th opening night of a season and, as the New York Times reported on its front page, therewith surpassed the old Caruso record of 17 opening nights.
As a conductor he has led opera performances in all the important theaters from the Metropolitan to London’s Covent Garden and the Vienna State Opera and has conducted purely symphonic concerts with such renowned orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony and the Chicago Symphony, as well as making further recordings as a conductor.
As administrator he was the music director of the Seville World’s Expo Fair and in this capacity invited the world’s foremost orchestras and opera companies including the Metropolitan Opera, to Seville, Spain. Today he is the General Director of both the Washington National Opera and of the Los Angeles Opera. Both companies enjoy special artistic acclaim and financial stability.
Born in Madrid to parents who were Zarzuela performers, Plácido Domingo moved to Mexico at the age of eight. He went to Mexico City’s Conservatory of Music to study piano and conducting, but eventually was sidetracked into vocal training after his voice was discovered. He made his operatic debut at Monterrey as Alfredo in “La Traviata” and then spent 2 ½ years with the Israel National Opera in Tel Aviv, singing 280 performances of 12 different roles.
In 1966, he created the title role in the United States premiere of Ginastera’s “Don Rodrigo” at the New York City Opera while appearing there in standard repertory as well. His Metropolitan Opera debut came in 1968, as Maurizio in “Adriana Lecouvreur”. He has subsequently appeared there in more than 400 performances of 42 different roles and is now in his 37th consecutive season with the company (2005/2006). He appears regularly at all the big opera houses of the world, including Milan’s La Scala, the Vienna State Opera, London’s Covent Garden, the Bastille Opera in Paris, the San Francisco Opera, Chicago’s Lyric Opera, the Washington National Opera, the Los Angeles Opera, the Teatro del Liceu in Barcelona, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, the Real in Madrid, and at the Bayreuth and Salzburg Festivals.
Domingo’s recordings, whether complete of operas , aria or duet albums or cross-over material, inevitably appear on the best seller charts and at one time, not long ago, 7 of his CD’s appeared simultaneously on Billboard’s top-selling charts of classical and cross-over recordings. Eight of his records have gone gold, meaning they have sold well over one million copies. Two of his most recent recording projects have been a double CD of every aria Verdi wrote for the tenor voice and a CD of excerpts from Wagner’s “Siegfried” and “Götterdämmerung” which includes most of the music written for the helden-tenor part of Siegfried. A recording of “Tristan & Isolde” was released in the summer of 2005.
Unlike many of his colleagues, he is also interested in broadening his repertory with new compositions, such as Anton Garcia Abril’s “Divinas Palabras”, Deborah Drattel’s “Nicholas and Alexandra”, with him as Rasputin. Also new for him, in his extensive recorded repertoire are 2 Spanish operas, Breton’s “La Dolores” and Albeniz’s “Merlin”, for which he won a Latin Grammy.
Highlights of the 2004/2005 season include singing for the first time Alfano’s “Cyrano de Bergerac” at the Metropolitan (his 121st role) where he also sang “Walküre” and conducted “Carmen”. He sang “Walküre” also at the Chicago Lyric and at London’s Covent Garden; “Parsifal” at the Liceu in Barcelona, in Berlin and Vienna; “Idomeneo” at the Los Angeles Opera; and “Luisa Fernanda” at the Washington National Opera, where he also conducted “Andrea Chenier” and some performances of “Samson et Dalila”. He sings concerts all over the world and, by recording the complete “Tristan and Isolde” added the 122nd role to his repertoire.
Domingo’s interest in helping young singers has led his yearly competition “Operalia” (www.operalia.org) which so far has taken place twice in Paris, Mexico City, Madrid, Bordeaux, Tokyo, Hamburg, Puerto Rico, Los Angeles, Washington and a combination of Switzerland (St. Gallen), Austria (Bregenz), and Germany (Friedrichshafen, Isle of Mainau). In the Fall 2004 it returned to Los Angeles and in the Spring of 2005 to Madrid. It remains the biggest on the international scene with annual prizes amounting close to $200.000. It has launched many singers to international recognition, not only through its prizes but because of Domingo’s continued interest in furthering their careers. March 2002 also saw the inauguration of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program of the Year.
Plácido Domingo has raised millions of dollars through special benefit concerts to help such causes as the victims of the devastating 1985 Mexico earthquake, AIDS, and the victims of such other disasters as the Armenian earthquake, the mud-slides of Acapulco, etc.
Highlights of the 2005/06 season include opening the Metropolitan Opera season with a Gala of 3 staged acts at which he will sing the final act of “Samson et Dalila”; celebrating the 50th anniversary season of the Washington National Opera by conducting “Vespri Siciliani” and singing 5 Gala evenings of 3 different acts (2nd act of “Fedora”, last act of “Otello” and last act of “The Merry Widow”). He sings “Walküre” in Warsaw, Paris, Copenhagen, with the Metropolitan on tour in Japan and concert-wise in Berlin; “Parsifal” in Los Angeles and Zurich; and he returns to the Metropolitan in New York to sing “Cyrano de Bergerac” and “Samson et Dalila” and to conduct “Rigoletto”; and he returns to London’s Covent Garden to sing “Cyrano de Bergerac” for the first time there. During the season he will also conduct the Montreal Symphony and an all-Mozart concert in Vienna; sing concerts throughout Europe and Asia, and participate in three big Gala events, the 50th anniversaries of the rebuilt Staatsoper in Vienna and the Washington National Opera, and the Joe Volpe Farewell in the Metropolitan.
“The greatest operatic artist of modern times.” - The Guardian
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