José Plácido Domingo Embil KBE (born January 21, 1941) better known as Plácido Domingo, is a world-renowned operatic tenor, known for his versatile and strong voice that possesses a ringing and clear tone throughout its range. He is considered as one of the most talented and hardest working musicians with 129 roles in his repertoire (as of November 2007), more than any other tenor. He is also admired for his operatic acting ability, his musicality and keen musical intellect, and the impressive number and variety of opera roles that he has mastered. In addition to his singing roles, he has also taken on conducting opera and concert performances, as well as serving as the General Director of the Washington National Opera in Washington, D.C. and the Los Angeles Opera in California. His contracts in both Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. have been extended through the 2010–2011 season.He was born near the Barrio de Salamanca section of Madrid, Spain, and moved to Mexico at age 8 with his family, who ran a zarzuela company. He was often asked to perform with his parent’s company when they needed a child role. He studied piano at first privately and later at the National Conservatory of Music in Mexico City.
In 1957,he made his first professional appearance performing with his mother in a concert at Mérida, Yucatán. At that time, he was working with his parents' zarzuela company, taking parts in baritone roles and as an accompanist with other singers. Among his first performances was a minor role in the first Mexican production of My Fair Lady where he was also the assistant conductor and assistant coach. The company made 185 performances which includes a production of Lehar's The Merry Widow where he performed as either Camille or Danilo.
In 1959, Domingo went for audition at the Mexico National Opera for baritone range but was then asked to sight-read some arias and lines in the tenor range. Finally he was accepted in the National Opera as a tenor comprimario and as a tutor for other singers. 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 acting in a minor role in 1959 (May 12) at the Teatro Degollado in Guadalajara as Pascual in Marina. It was followed by Borsa in Rigoletto (with Cornell MacNeil and Norman Treigle also in the cast), Padre Confessor (Le dialogue des Carmelites) and others.
In addition to that, he played piano for a ballet company to supplement his income. Domingo also played piano for a program on Mexico cultural television which was newly founded at that time. The program consisted of excerpts from zarzuelas, operettas, operas, and musical comedies. He made few small parts while at the teater such as plays by Federico GarcÃa Lorca, Luigi Pirandello, and Anton Chekhov.
In 1961, he made his operatic debut as a leading role as Alfredo in La Traviata at Monterrey and later in the same year, his debut in the United States with the Dallas Civic Opera where he played the role as Arturo in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor opposite Joan Sutherland as the title role. In 1962, he returned to play the role as Edgardo in the same opera with Lily Pons. At the end of 1962, he signed a 6 month contract with Hebrew National Opera in Tel Aviv but later extended the contract and stay for two and a half years, singing 280 performances of 12 different roles.
In June 1965, after finishing his contract with Hebrew National Opera, Domingo went for an audition at the New York City Opera and scheduled to make his New York debut as Don Jose in Bizet's Carmen but his debut came earlier when he was offered to fill in for an ailing tenor at the last minute in Puccini's Madama Butterfly. In June 17, 1965, Domingo made his New York debut as B.F Pinkerton at the New York City Opera. In February 1966, he sang the title role in the US premiere of Ginastera's Don Rodrigo at the New York City Opera, with much acclaim. The performance also marked as the opening of the City Opera's new home at Lincoln Center.His official debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York occurred on September 28, 1968 when he substituted Franco Corelli, in Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur singing with Renata Tebaldi. Before Adriana Lecouvreur, he had sung in performances by the Metropolitan Opera of Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci in 1966. Since then, he has opened the season at the Metropolitan Opera 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. In 1971, he played the role Mario Cavaradossi in Puccini's Tosca at the Metropolitan opera and continued with the same role for many times. He has played the role more than any other tenor.
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. In 1981 he 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.
On September 19, 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.
Throughout 1990s until today, Domingo continued performing in many same and new operas, among them Wagner’s Parsifal and Mozart’s Idomeneo as the title role, Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia as Figaro, Wagner’s Die Walküre as Siegmund, Lehár's The Merry Widow as Danilo and Alfano’s Cyrano de Bergerac as Cyrano. From middle 1990 to 2006 only, Domingo has added 36 new roles to his repertoire.
Giving him even greater international recognition outside of the world of opera, 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, including at the three subsequent World Cup finals (1994 in Los Angeles, 1998 in Paris, and 2002 in Yokohama). Alone, Domingo again made an appearance at the final of the 2006 World Cup in Berlin.
He holds a world record for the longest ovation on the operatic stage with 101 curtain calls and 80 minutes non-stop applause after performing Otello, Verdi's operatic version of Shakespeare's Othello, as the Moor of Venice in Vienna on July 30, 1991. In 2006, Domingo recorded an album Italia Ti amo, dedicated himself to Neapolitan and Italian songs, which include Stanislao Gastaldon’s "Musica Prohibita" and the famous "Core N’Grato" by Salvatore Cardillo accompanied by Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Eugene Kohn.
In what has been called his 'final career move', Placido Domingo announced on January 25, 2007 that in 2009 he would switch ranges to baritone by taking on one of Verdi's most demanding baritone roles, as the Doge of Genoa, Simon Boccanegra, in the opera of the same name.
He was born to Plácido Domingo Ferrer (March 8, 1907 - November 26, 1987) and Pepita Embil (1918 - September 1, 1994), two Spanish zarzuela stars who nurtured his early musical abilities. Domingo’s father is half Catalan and half Aragonese while his mother is a Basque. His father, Plácido Domingo Ferrer was a violinist performing for opera and zarzuela orchestra. He was a baritone and actively taking roles in zarzuela. However his promising career as a baritone ended after he damaged his voice by singing with a cold. Domingo's mother was an established singer who made her zarzuela debut at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona. She met her husband at age 21 while performing in Federico Moreno Torroba's Sor Navarra. In 1946 Moreno Torroba and Domingo’s parents formed a zarzuela company and travelled frequently to Mexico. His parents later stayed permanently in Mexico and established their own zarzuela troupe, the Domingo-Embil Company. In addition to their son, they also have a daughter, Mari Pepa Sanchez.
At age 16 in 1958, Plácido Domingo married a fellow piano student and his first son, José was born within the year. However, the marriage didn't last long, the couple separated shortly thereafter. In 1962, Plácido Domingo married Marta Ornelas, a lyric soprano whom he met during his conservatory days. In the same year, Marta had been voted "Mexican Singer of the Year" but she gave up her promising career to devote her time to her family. They have two sons, Plácido Jr born in 1965 and Alvaro Maurizio born in 1968.
He has made well over 100 recordings, most of which are full-length operas, often recording the same role more than once. Among these 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 studio 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". 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.
New recordings that have been released in the first half of 2006 include studio recordings of Puccini's Edgar, Isaac Albéniz's Pepita Jiménez, as well as a selection of Italian and Neapolitan songs, titled Italia ti amo (all three with Deutsche Grammophon). Amongst many television appearance in many countries over the years (a large number for charitable purposes), Domingo appeared as the star act in the New Orleans Opera Association's A Night For New Orleans with Frederica von Stade and Elizabeth Futral, in March 2006. The concert was to raise funds for the rebuilding of the city.
Domingo has appeared in numerous opera films, among them are Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's Madama Butterfly, Francesco Rosi's Carmen (Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording), Gianfranco de Bosio's Tosca with Raina Kabaivanska, Brian Large's Tosca with Catherine Malfitano (Emmy Award),[11] Franco Zeffirelli's Otello, Cavalleria rusticana & Pagliacci, and La Traviata (with Teresa Stratas, which received a Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording).
He has also appeared on television in the 1978 La Scala production of Puccini's Manon Lescaut which marked the Scala debut of Hungarian soprano Sylvia Sass, as well in zarzuela evenings, and Live at the Met telecasts and broadcasts. In 2007, Domingo had a cameo in "The Homer of Seville", an episode of The Simpsons in which revolves around Homer Simpson becoming an opera singer. In his cameo, Domingo sang briefly.
Perhaps the most versatile of all living tenors, Domingo has sung 125 roles on stage and as many as 129 roles when also counting studio recorded roles, ranging from Mozart to Ginastera. His main repertoire however is Italian (Otello, Cavaradossi in Tosca, Don Carlo, Des Grieux in Manon Lescaut, Dick Johnson in La fanciulla del West , Radames in Aida), 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, the latest was Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride in November 2007 at the Metropolitan Opera.
(Courtesy Wikipedia)
