Plácido Domingo

José Plácido Domingo Embil (born 21 January 1941) is a Spanish opera singer, conductor, and arts administrator. He has recorded over a hundred complete operas and is well known for his versatility, regularly performing in Italian, French, German, Spanish, English and Russian in the most prestigious opera houses in the world. Although primarily a '' lirico-spinto'' tenor for most of his career, especially popular for his Cavaradossi, Hoffmann, Don José and Canio, he quickly moved into more dramatic roles, becoming the most acclaimed Otello of his generation. In the early 2010s, he transitioned from the tenor repertory into exclusively baritone parts, most notably Simon Boccanegra. As of 2020, he has performed 151 different roles.

Domingo has also achieved significant success as a crossover artist, especially in the genres of Latin and popular music. In addition to winning fourteen Grammy and Latin Grammy Awards, several of his records have gone silver, gold, platinum and multi-platinum. His first pop album, '' Perhaps Love'' (1981), spread his fame beyond the opera world. The title song, performed as a duet with country and folk singer John Denver, has sold almost four million copies and helped lead to numerous television appearances for the tenor. He also starred in many cinematically released and televised opera movies, particularly under the direction of Franco Zeffirelli. In 1990, he began singing with fellow tenors Luciano Pavarotti and José Carreras as part of The Three Tenors. The first Three Tenors recording became the best-selling classical album of all time.Classical Music Magazine, volume 17, p. 39 (1994). "And then there's the three tenors phenomenon: The London recording from the 1990 concert became the biggest-selling classical album of all time, having now topped 10-million units throughout the world."

Growing up working in his parents' zarzuela company in Mexico, Domingo has since regularly promoted this form of Spanish opera. He also increasingly conducts operas and concerts and was the general director of the Los Angeles Opera in California from 2017 to 2019. He was initially the artistic director and later general director of the Washington National Opera from 1996 to 2011. He has been involved in numerous humanitarian works, as well as efforts to help young opera singers, including starting and running the international singing competition, Operalia. In the years 2019-2021 he has performed continuously on stages in Berlin, Budapest, Cologne, Graz, Madrid, Mérida, Milan, Monte Carlo, Moscow, Munich, Palermo, Rome, Salzburg, Sofia, Verona, Versailles, Vienna and Zurich.

Early life

Plácido Domingo was born on 21 January 1941 in the Retiro district of Madrid, Spain.Plácido Domingo: "Nací a diez minutos del Real, en la calle Ibiza"
(spanish) His mother recalled that she and her husband knew he would be a musician from the age of five, due to his ability to hum complex music from a zarzuela after seeing a performance of it. In 1949, just days before his eighth birthday, he moved to Mexico with his family. His parents, both singers, had decided to start a zarzuela company there after a successful tour of Latin America. Soon after arriving in Mexico, Domingo won a singing contest for boys, and his parents occasionally recruited him and his sister for children's roles in their zarzuela productions. Domingo studied piano from a young age, at first privately and later at the National Conservatory of Music in Mexico City, which he entered when he was fourteen. At the conservatory, he also attended conducting classes taught by Igor Markevitch and studied voice under Carlo Morelli, the brother of Renato Zanelli. The two brothers were famous practitioners of both baritone and tenor roles. Domingo's conservatory classes constituted the entirety of his formal vocal instruction; he never studied privately with a singing teacher.

In 1957, at age sixteen, Domingo made his first professional appearance, accompanying his mother on the piano at a concert at Mérida, Yucatán. The same year he made his major zarzuela debut in Manuel Fernández Caballero's , singing a baritone role. At that time, he was working with his parents' zarzuela company, eventually taking several baritone roles and acting as an accompanist for other singers. The following year, the tenor in another company's touring production of '' Luisa Fernanda'' fell ill. In his first performance as a tenor, Domingo replaced the ailing singer, although he feared the part's tessitura was too high for him. Later that same year, he sang the tenor role of Rafael in the Spanish opera '' El gato montés'', illustrating his willingness to assay the tenor range, even as he still considered himself a baritone. On 12 May 1959 at the Teatro Degollado in Guadalajara, he appeared in the baritone role (sometimes sung by basses) of Pascual in Emilio Arrieta's . Like ''El gato montés'', ''Marina'' is an opera composed in the zarzuela musical style rather than a zarzuela proper, although both are usually performed by zarzuela companies. In addition to his work with zarzuelas, among his earliest performances was a minor role in the first Latin American production of the musical '' My Fair Lady'', in which he was also the assistant conductor and assistant coach. While he was a member, the company gave 185 performances of the musical in various cities in Mexico.

In 1959, Domingo auditioned for the Mexico National Opera at the Palacio de Béllas Artes as a baritone, but was then asked to sight-read the tenor aria "Amor ti vieta" from '' Fedora''. He was accepted at the National Opera as a tenor comprimario and as a tutor for other singers. In what he considered his operatic debut, Domingo sang the minor role of Borsa in Verdi's '' Rigoletto'' on September 23 at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in a production with veteran American baritone Cornell MacNeil and bass-baritone Norman Treigle. He later appeared as the Padre Confessor in '' Dialogues of the Carmelites'', Altoum and Pang in '' Turandot'', Normanno and Arturo in '' Lucia di Lammermoor'' among other small parts. While at the National Opera, he also appeared in a production of Lehár's operetta, '' The Merry Widow'', in which he alternated as Camille and Danilo (both originally created as tenor roles, although the latter is often sung by baritones). Domingo made his debut in Verdi's '' Otello'' at Béllas Artes at age 21 in the summer of 1962 not in the title rôle for which he has now been internationally famous for decades as one of its greatest interpreters, but in the small comprimario part of Cassio.

To supplement his income, the young Domingo played the piano for a ballet company, as well as for a program on Mexico's newly founded cultural television station. The program consisted of excerpts from zarzuelas, operettas, operas, and musical comedies. He acted in a few small parts while at the theater in plays by Federico García Lorca, Luigi Pirandello, and Anton Chekhov. He also provided song arrangements and backup vocals for ''Los Camisas Negras'' in the late 1950s, a rock-and-roll band led by César Costa. In his autobiography, Domingo reflected on the benefits of his busy and varied career as a teenager: "Today, when people ask me how I manage to hold up under my extremely heavy work load, I answer that I became accustomed to intense activity very early in my life and that I love it now as I loved it then."

Career

1960s–1980s

Establishing a career in opera

In 1961, Domingo made his operatic debut in a leading role as Alfredo in '' La traviata'' at the Teatro de la Ciudad in Monterrey. Later the same year, he made his debut in the United States with the Dallas Civic Opera, where he sang the role of Arturo in ''Lucia di Lammermoor'' opposite Joan Sutherland in the title role and Ettore Bastianini as Enrico. In 1962, he returned to Texas to sing the role of Edgardo in the same opera with Lily Pons at the Fort Worth Opera. It would be the soprano's final operatic performance. That November Domingo sang the second tenor role of Cassio to Mario del Monaco's celebrated Otello in Hartford, Connecticut. At the end of 1962, he signed a six-month contract with the Israel National Opera in Tel Aviv, but later extended the contract and stayed for two and a half years, singing 280 performances of 12 different roles.

In June 1965, after finishing his contract in Tel Aviv, Domingo auditioned at the New York City Opera. He was hired to make his New York debut as Don José in Bizet's '' Carmen'' with the company, but his debut came earlier than expected on 17 June 1965 when he filled in for an ailing tenor at the last minute in Puccini's '' Madama Butterfly''. In February 1966, he sang the title role in the U.S. premiere of Ginastera's ''Don Rodrigo'' at the New York City Opera, to much acclaim. ''The New York Times'' review noted: "Mr. Domingo was as impressive as ever—a big, burly, large-voiced singer who looks exactly as one would visualize a hero from Gothic Spain." The performance also marked the opening of the City Opera's new home at Lincoln Center.

His official debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York occurred on 28 September 1968, when he substituted with little notice for Franco Corelli in Cilea's ''Adriana Lecouvreur'' with Renata Tebaldi. Two years before this ''Adriana Lecouvreur'', he had already performed with the Metropolitan Opera at Lewisohn Stadium in Mascagni's '' Cavalleria rusticana'' and Leoncavallo's '' Pagliacci''. Since then, he has opened the season at the Metropolitan Opera 21 times, more than any other singer, surpassing the previous record of Enrico Caruso by four. He has appeared with the company every season since 1968–1969. He made his debut at the Vienna State Opera in 1967; at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1968; at both La Scala and San Francisco Opera in 1969; at Arena di Verona on July 16, 1969 as Calaf (his first) in Turandot with Birgit Nilsson; at the Philadelphia Lyric Opera Company in 1970; and at Covent Garden in 1971. In 1975, Domingo debuted at the prestigious Salzburg Festival, singing the title role in '' Don Carlo'' in an all-star cast with Nicolai Ghiaurov, Piero Cappuccilli, Mirella Freni and Christa Ludwig with Herbert von Karajan conducting. Thereafter Domingo frequently returned to Salzburg for a number of operas, as well as for several concert performances. He has now sung at practically every important opera house and festival worldwide.

Domingo first sang Mario Cavaradossi in Puccini's '' Tosca'' in a 1961 performance in Mexico City. He sang Cavaradossi at the Met on February 15, 1969 with Nilsson (broadcast). 1971 he made his Covent Garden debut in the role. He continued to sing the part for many years, especially at the Met and in Vienna, eventually performing it more than any other of his roles. In September 1975, Domingo debuted in the title role of Verdi's ''Otello'' at the Hamburg State Opera. It soon became his signature role and one of operas he performed most frequently (over 200 times). He recorded the part three times in the studio and appeared in four officially released filmed versions of the opera. Oscar-winning Shakespearean actor, Laurence Olivier, declared after seeing the tenor in the role: "Domingo plays Othello as well as I do ''and'' he has that voice."

Domingo has also conducted operas and occasionally symphony orchestras as well. On 7 October 1973 he conducted his first opera performance, ''La traviata'' starring Patricia Brooks at the New York City Opera. The same year he released his debut album as a conductor, ''Domingo Conducts Milnes/Milnes Conducts Domingo'', with baritone Sherrill Milnes. Domingo increasingly began to appear as a conductor at major opera houses around the world. In late 1983, he led a performance of Johan Strauss's '' Die Fledermaus'' at Covent Garden, which was televised. Three years later, he made a studio recording of the operetta, in which he both conducted and sang the role of Alfred.

Growing celebrity

The 1980s were a time of growing success and fame for Domingo. In 1981 he gained considerable recognition outside of the opera world when he recorded the song " Perhaps Love" as a duet with the American country/folk music singer John Denver. He followed this success with many more albums of popular and Latin music. Domingo expressed the hope that his popular albums would expand his fan base in a way that would eventually lead more people to discover opera. These forays outside of the opera world led to numerous television appearances for the tenor, who was no longer known only by classical music lovers. In 1987, he and Denver joined Julie Andrews for an Emmy Award-winning holiday television special, ''The Sound of Christmas'', filmed in Salzburg, Austria. He was interviewed on many talk shows and news programs, including '' The Tonight Show'' with Johnny Carson and '' 60 Minutes''. Increasingly substantial numbers of his operatic performances were also shown on television during the 1980s.

After gaining experience acting for the cameras in numerous televised operas, Domingo performed in his first cinematically released opera movie, '' La Traviata'', in 1982. He had worked with the film's director, former Academy Award nominee Franco Zeffirelli, previously in staged opera productions. Even as filming continued in Rome, he commuted back and forth to perform live in Vienna, Buenos Aires, Barcelona, and Madrid. In 1984, Domingo filmed the role of Don José in Francesco Rosi's movie version of '' Carmen'' in his native Spain. Zeffirelli reunited with the tenor two years later for another version of an opera, '' Otello'', that ran in movie theaters worldwide. Domingo considered ''Carmen'' the best of the three, although he disagreed with the director's "low conception" of his character. He found ''La traviata'' to be "impressive", but expressed displeasure over cuts to the music in Zeffirelli's ''Otello''.

Even while diversifying his career, he continued to appear with great frequency in largely well-received operatic performances. By 1982 '' Newsweek'' declared Domingo "King Of The Opera" on its cover. The magazine's featured article, which recounted and analyzed his career, praised the singer for his "heroic voice, superb musicianship, fine acting skills and dashing Latin good looks". That same year, Domingo appeared at the Metropolitan Opera's opening night performance of Bellini's '' Norma''. It was the first time onstage that the tenor sang the part of Pollione, one of his rare excursions into the bel canto repertory. He was also set to open the Met's 1983-1984 centennial season debuting as Enée in a well publicized new production of Berlioz' '' Les Troyens'', but a couple months in advance expressed uncertainty whether he could successful sing the role's high tessitura without harming his voice. He asked to be released from his contract, but eventually decided to sing four of the six performances in the run with his friend James Levine conducting, including one performance that was telecast. He never sang the part again.

During rehearsals for ''Les Troyens'', Domingo rescued the opening night of the San Francisco Opera's season. The tenor scheduled to sing Otello, Carlo Cossutta, cancelled on the day of the performance. The company asked Domingo to replace him at 4 p.m. He quickly flew from New York to San Francisco, rushed to the opera house, and appeared in the role at 10:30 in the evening. A writer for the ''San Francisco Chronicle'', among other journalists, reported extensively on the event. He observed the crowds gathering around the stage door for the tenor's arrival and remarked on how most of the waiting audience members "were breathless over the chance to see Placido Domingo, a star who draws the kind of rapt devotion that Mick Jagger inspires among rock fans."

For the opening night of the following Met season, Domingo returned to the role of Wagner's '' Lohengrin'', which he had last sung in early 1968. He had originally dropped the role from his repertoire after he felt his voice had been temporarily damaged by learning the challenging opera. ''The New York Times'' noted that the now more mature artist "lacked the chrome-plated, penetrating quality that one associates with German tenors", but praised him for bringing "an unusual legato grace to a role that is seldom sung so beautifully". He also performed the role at the Vienna State Opera in 1985 and 1990. A performance during his last run of the opera was televised on 28 January 1990 and later released on VHS and DVD. He had just recovered from the flu at the time.

On 19 September 1985 the biggest earthquake in Mexico's history devastated part of the Mexican capital. Domingo's aunt, uncle, nephew and his nephew's young son were killed in the collapse of the Nuevo León apartment block in the Tlatelolco housing complex. Cancelling several performances, Domingo himself labored to rescue survivors. During the next year, he performed benefit concerts for the victims and released an album of one of the events. Also in 1986 he appeared in a special gala concert for Queen Elizabeth II and in the world premiere of ''Goya'', an opera that Gian Carlo Menotti composed specifically for him. Domingo had encouraged Menotti to make the opera about the Spanish painter Francisco Goya, whose life fascinated the singer.

Since 1990

Changing repertoire

Since the 1990s Domingo has continued adding new roles to his growing repertoire, while dropping earlier parts. The 1990s were the start of rapid change in the types of roles the tenor performed. During this decade he sang his last Cavaradossi, Don Carlo, Don José, Gustavo/Riccardo, Hoffmann, and Alvaro, among others, and he began instead to expand the breadth of his roles more substantially beyond the standard Italian and French repertory. In particular, he increased his involvement in Wagnerian operas. Although he had already sung Lohengrin and recorded a few operas by the composer, he did not perform any of Wagner's works frequently onstage until he debuted as Parsifal in 1991 and Siegmund in 1992. He continued to sing these roles for almost two decades, including at the Bayreuth Festival.

For the first time in over three decades, Domingo debuted in a Mozart opera, '' Idomeneo'', in 1994 at the Met. During the nineties, he also appeared in the early Verdi opera, '' Stiffelio'', the Brazilian '' Il Guarany'', and the French grand operas, ''Hérodiade'' and '' Le prophète'', all of which are rarely performed. Toward the end of the decade, he added his first Russian-language opera, Tchaikovsky's '' The Queen of Spades'' (although he had performed '' Eugene Onegin'' in translation while in Israel early in his career).

In the 2000s, he sang his last performances of some of the most successful operas from early in his career: ''Andrea Chénier'', '' Samson et Dalila'', ''Otello'', '' La fanciulla del West'', '' Fedora'', '' Pagliacci'', and ''Adriana Lecouvreur''. In the twenty-first century, however, he has focused mostly on new roles. Early in the 2000s he sang the role of Arrigo in two concert performances of Verdi's rare ''La battaglia di Legnano'' and debuted in Wolf-Ferrari's '' Sly'', an opera that his Three Tenors colleague José Carreras had recently revived from obscurity. Domingo himself worked to popularize Franco Alfano's infrequently performed '' Cyrano de Bergerac'' a few years later. Shifting musical styles again, he appeared in the eighteenth-century operas '' Iphigénie en Tauride'' and '' Tamerlano'' late in the decade.

Additionally, Domingo created several new roles in modern operas, such as the title role in Tan Dun's 2006 opera '' The First Emperor'' at the Metropolitan Opera, which was broadcast worldwide into movie theaters as part of the Met Live in HD series. In September 2010, he created the role of the poet Pablo Neruda in the world première of Daniel Catán's opera ''Il Postino'' at the Los Angeles Opera. During the 2011–2012 season, Domingo sang Neptune in the Metropolitan Opera's world premiere performance of Jeremy Sams' '' The Enchanted Island''. A pastiche of Baroque opera with story and characters drawn from Shakespeare's '' The Tempest'' and '' A Midsummer Night's Dream'', a performance of the production was telecast on PBS' ''Great Performances at the Met''.

High-profile appearances

Giving him greater international recognition outside of the world of opera, Domingo participated in The Three Tenors concert on the eve of the 1990 FIFA World Cup Final in Rome with José Carreras and Luciano Pavarotti. The event was originally conceived to raise money for the José Carreras International Leukemia Foundation and was later repeated a number of times, including at the three subsequent World Cup finals (1994 in Los Angeles, 1998 in Paris, and 2002 in Yokohama). The recording of their first appearance together, ''Carreras Domingo Pavarotti in Concert'', went multi-platinum with sales in excess of three million in the United States alone, eventually outselling every previous classical album worldwide. Domingo and his colleagues won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Solo for the album. Four years after their first successful concert, around 1.3 billion viewers worldwide watched their televised second World Cup performance at Dodger Stadium. The recording of that event, ''The Three Tenors in Concert 1994'', went platinum and multi-platinum in many countries, even reaching the number one spot on the UK Albums Chart. Without Pavarotti and Carreras, Domingo made an appearance at the final of the 2006 World Cup in Berlin, along with rising stars Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón. Before the 2014 World Cup final, he performed in Rio de Janeiro with pianist Lang Lang and soprano Ana María Martínez, a winner of his Operalia competition and a frequent singing partner of his. In addition to these large-scale concerts, Domingo recorded the official song for the 1982 World Cup in Spain, "El Mundial".

A lifelong football fan, Domingo has been a vocal supporter of Real Madrid C.F., his home-town team. In 2002, he performed the club's new commemorative anthem, "Himno del Centenario del Real Madrid". It was written by José María Cano, with whom he had previously collaborated on the opera, ''Luna''. Domingo presented the song live at the Bernabeu Stadium during celebrations of the football club's 100 year anniversary. On 13 May 2012, Domingo performed during Real Madrid's season-ending celebrations, when the team won their 32nd Spanish league title. In 2016 he sang the new version of Real Madrid's " Hala Madrid y nada más" with "...Y Nada Mas."

On 24 August 2008, Domingo performed a duet with Song Zuying, singing ''Ài de Huǒyàn (The Flame of Love)'' at the 2008 Summer Olympics closing ceremony

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