Who is Plácido Domingo?
Plácido Domingo is a famous Spanish opera singer, and possibly the greatest tenor ever
How old is Plácido Domingo?
Plácido Domingo was born in Spain, officially in 1941, but many people claim that the date should be a year or more earlier than that.
Does Plácido Domingo come from a musical family?
Yes he does. His father was a singer and violinist, performing for opera and zarzuela orchestras while his mother was an established soprano.
When did he start performing?
Even if the date he prefers is correct, he has preserved his voice in an extraordinarily energetic career for almost 50 years, having made his debut in 1959 in Mexico, where his family moved when he was eight.
During the course of his enormous career he has always looked for new roles to challenge him, and has recorded over a hundred, performing an impressive proportion of those on stage. He began with the usual Italian operas, primarily Verdi and Puccini, but moved back in time, the earliest of his roles being in Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie.
He has also sung a few contemporary operas, but only ones written in a fairly traditional idiom. What is most surprising is that, almost alone among tenors who made their name in Italian opera, since he was about 50 he has been equally involved with German opera, primarily Wagner, some of whose greatest roles he has not risked singing in the theatre, but has recorded in part or whole. He has even sung at the Bayreuth Festival, the ultimate accolade.
Nor has he neglected either French opera, including Berlioz and Massenet, or Russian. And now he is moving into the baritone repertoire, with Gluck’s Oreste already at the Met. A self-confessed workaholic, he also conducts opera, and is in charge of the Washington National Opera and the Los Angeles Opera, jobs which involve an immense amount of fund-raising. Quite apart from that, he was of course one of the Three Tenors, and has recorded Christmas albums and discs of popular Italian and Spanish songs.
Which has been Plácido Domingo's most famous roles?
With such a vast range of repertoire, it isn’t surprising that we don’t associate Domingo with particular roles, with the possible exception of Verdi’s Otello, of which he has been the leading performer since Jon Vickers, Domingo’s antithesis in many ways, retired. But even then, when one thinks of that role and the kind of voice and presence it requires, Domingo’s isn’t necessarily the first name to come to mind. It’s inevitable that he has been criticised for giving a standardised account of many roles – but then it’s hard to see how individual you could be in many of Verdi’s less famous works.
The fact remains that when you listen to Domingo, you are guaranteed a flood of gorgeous sound, sensitive musicianship, the security of a voice so well looked after that nothing will go wrong and, if you are seeing him, a decent standard of acting. Warmth, taste, commitment, understanding: these aren’t the first things that spring to mind when you think of a tenor, but they are when you think of Domingo.
The operatic scene since the mid 1960s is inconceivable without him, and the 2gigantic treasury of opera recordings will bear witness to future generations of his greatness. In an age when ‘celebrity’ has rightly become a word of contempt, Plácido Domingo’s fame is an example of how once a huge name was built on solid foundations.
Michael Tanner
In his own words: ‘My motto is “When I rest, I rust”.’
Is Plácido Domingo married?
He married Ana María Guerra Cué in 1957, but they divorced a year later. He then married his current wife Marta Ornelas in 1962. he has three children
Read more:
Tenor Plácido Domingo switches to baritone
Plácido Domingo to be given freedom of the City of London
First Plácido Domingo Festival to take place in Andalucía
