Plácido Domingo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
"Domingo" redirects here. It is also the Spanish version of the name Dominic.
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 as a tenor in Monterrey, Mexico, first in the small role of Borsa in Rigoletto in 1959 and then as Alfredo in La Traviata in 1961. In 1962 he joined the Israeli National Opera, and first performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York on September 28, 1968, in an Adriana Lecouvreur with Renata Tebaldi. (Since then, he has opened the season there 21 times, surpassing the record of the great 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.
Being one of the most versatile of all living tenors, Domingo has sung 122 roles to date, ranging from Mozart to Ginastera, more than any tenor in the history of opera. 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). He has also been appointed general director of two opera companies, first the Washington National Opera and later the Los Angeles Opera.
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 Carreras' 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, and his nephew plus his nephew's little boy, were killed in the collapse of the Nuevo León apartment block in the Tlatelolco housing complex. Domingo himself labored to rescue survivors. During a 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 [1] 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 8 August 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". According to this review, Domingo has sung at least 115 different operatic roles, and it characterized his July 2005 performance of Siegmund in Wagner's Die Walküre at Covent Garden as "unforgettable" and "luminous". This review also remarks on how Domingo is still, at the age of 64, 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 honory 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).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pl%C3%A1cido_Domingo
