Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo (born January 21, 1941) is a famous Spanish opera singer, well-known for a voice that is versatile, strong and possessed of a ringing and clear tone throughout its range.
Biography and career
Plácido Domingo was born in Madrid, Spain, and moved to Mexico at age 8 with his family, who ran a zarzuela company. In Mexico City he studied music at the National Conservatory. He provided backup vocals for Los Black Jeans in 1958, a rock-and-roll band lead by César Costa. He learned piano and conducting, but made his stage debut in 1959 (May 12) at the Teatro Degollado in Guadalajara as Pascual in Marina. It was followed by Borsa in Rigoletto, Padre Confessor (Le dialogue des Carmelites) and others. In 1962 he joined the Israeli National Opera in Tel Aviv, where he spent 2 and a half years, singing 280 performances. His birthdate has sometimes incorrectly been given as 1934. This arised from a comment by Lauri-Volpi in 1971 who on hearing him in Forza del destino said that "no one could sing Alvaro like that at 30 years old."[1]. This was shown to be an erroneous assumption by the author Daniel Snowman who obtained Domingo's birth certificate from the Madrid authorities.
In 1966, he sang the title role in the US premiere of Ginastera's Don Rodrigo at the New York City Opera, with much acclaim. He first performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York on September 28, 1968, in Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur, singing with Renata Tebaldi. (Since then, he has opened the season there 21 times, surpassing the previous record of Enrico Caruso by four.) 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, and at Covent Garden in 1971, and has now sung at practically every other important opera house and festival worldwide.
Perhaps the most versatile of all living tenors, Domingo has sung 92 roles to date (recorded-only roles are not considered in this article to be part of his repertoire), ranging from Mozart to Ginastera. His main repertoire however is Italian (Il Trovatore, Don Carlo, Otello), French (Faust, Werther, Don José in Carmen, Samson in Samson et Dalila), and German (Lohengrin, Parsifal, and Siegmund in Die Walküre). He continues to add more operas to his repertoire, such as recently Franco Alfano's Cyrano de Bergerac at the Metropolitan Opera.
Throughout the years, Domingo has also turned his hand to conducting opera (as early as La Traviata on October 7, 1973, at New York City Opera) as well as, occasionally, symphonic orchestras.
He is the general director of two opera companies, the Washington National Opera and the Los Angeles Opera. (Both contracts have just been extended through the 2010-2011 season.)
He also founded Operalia, an yearly international competition for gifted young opera singers, in 1993.
In 1981 Domingo gained considerable recognition outside of the opera world when he recorded the song Perhaps Love as a duet with the late American country/folk music singer John Denver. 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 became a household name in 1990 when, with José Carreras and Luciano Pavarotti, he participated in The Three Tenors concert at the opening of the 1990 World Cup in Rome. The event was originally conceived to raise money for the José Carreras International Leukemia Foundation and was later repeated a number of times.
On September 19th, 1985, the biggest earthquake in Mexico's history devastated the whole Mexican capital. Domingo's aunt, uncle, his nephew and his nephew’s young son were killed in the collapse of the Nuevo León apartment block in the Tlatelolco housing complex. Domingo himself labored to rescue survivors. During the next year, he did benefit concerts for the victims and released an album of one of the events.
Domingo has appeared in at least four opera films of note: Francesco Rosi's Carmen as well as Franco Zeffirelli's Otello, La Traviata (with Teresa Stratas), and Pagliacci, and also in numerous operatic videos. He has appeared on television, both in zarzuela evenings, and Live at the Met telecasts and broadcasts. Among his many recordings is a boxed set of every tenor aria Verdi ever wrote, including several rarely-performed versions, in different languages from the original operas, which Verdi wrote for specific performances.
In August 2005 EMI Classics released a new recording of Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde in which Domingo sings the title role of Tristan. A review of this recording, headlined "Vocal perfections", that appeared in the August 8, 2005 issue of The Economist begins with the word "Monumental" and ends with the words, "a musical lyricism and a sexual passion that make the cost and the effort entirely worthwhile". (One must, however, note that Domingo himself has publicly admitted that he doesn't have the vocal power and stamina to perform the role of Tristan on the stage. Thus, to some extent, such a recording is merely a fabrication of the studio instead of being evidence of the tenor's vocal and interpretative prowess.) It characterized his July 2005 performance of Siegmund in Wagner's Die Walküre at Covent Garden as "unforgettable" and "luminous". The review also remarks that Domingo is still taking on roles that he has not previously performed.
Mr. Domingo has received numerous honors, including the Kennedy Center Honors (2000), the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2002), the Prince of Asturias Award (1991), the Order of the British Empire (2002), Commander of the French Légion d'honneur (2002), and honorary doctorates of the Royal Northern College of Music (1982), Philadelphia College of Performing Arts (1982), Oklahoma City University (1984), Universidad Complutense de Madrid (1989), New York University (1990), Georgetown University (1992), Washington College in Chestertown (2000), Anáhuac University in Mexico (2001), Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw (2003), and Oxford University (2003).