Plácido Domingo
His more than 100 recordings of complete operas, compilations of arias and duets, and crossover discs have earned him 12 Grammy Awards, including three Latin Grammys, and he has made more than 50 music videos and won two Emmy Awards. In addition to starring in three feature opera films—Carmen, La Traviata and Otello—he voiced the roles of Monte in Beverly Hills Chihuahua and Skeleton Jorge in the animated film The Book of Life, and also appeared as himself on Sesame Street and The Simpsons. His telecast of Tosca from the authentic settings in Rome was seen by more than one billion people in 117 countries. He subsequently took the title role in a 2010 live telecast of Rigoletto from Mantua, Italy, the city in which the opera’s story takes place. In 1990, he and his colleagues José Carreras and the late Luciano Pavarotti formed the Three Tenors, performing with enormous success all over the world and attracting millions of new fans to opera.
He has conducted more than 500 opera performances and symphonic concerts with the Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden, Vienna State Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Chicago Symphony, Vienna Philharmonic, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, National Symphony (Washington), London Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Berlin Philharmonic. In 2018, he made his conducting debut at the Bayreuth Festival, leading performances of Die Walküre.
Domingo is the former General Director of Washington National Opera and Los Angeles Opera, to both of which he gave a fundamental impulse to bring them into the “major league” of American opera ensembles. In 1993, he founded the international voice competition Operalia, and he later co-created Young Artist programs in Washington, Los Angeles, and Valencia (Spain). He has received honorary doctorates from Oxford University and New York University for his lifelong commitment and contribution to music and the arts. He made his first stage appearances in a leading baritone role in 2009, performing the title role of Simon Boccanegra in Berlin. Since then, he has added several more Verdi baritone roles to his repertoire, with appearances in Don Carlo, Rigoletto, I Due Foscari, La Traviata, Nabucco, Giovanna d’Arco, Il Trovatore, Macbeth, Ernani and Luisa Miller. He has also won acclaim in the baritone roles of Athanaël in Massenet’s Thaïs, the title role in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, and Zurga in Les Pêcheurs de Perles (his 150th role, which he performed at the 2018 Salzburg Festival).
In addition to concerts in Tokyo, Lucerne, Úbeda (Spain), Cologne, and the Arena di Verona (gala), his 2020 singing engagements include Giorgio Germont in La Traviata at the Berlin Staatsoper, Madrid’s Teatro Real, Florence’s Maggio Musicale, and La Scala; the title role in Nabucco at the Vienna Staatsoper and Munich Staatsoper; the title role in Simon Boccanegra at the Hamburg Staatsoper; Vidal Hernando in the zarzuela Luisa Fernanda at Madrid’s Teatro de la Zarzuela; Rodrigo in Don Carlo at London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; and Monforte in concert performances of I Vespri Siciliani at the Salzburg Festival.
His conducting engagements for the same period include the Verdi Requiem in Moscow, Luisa Fernanda in Madrid, La Traviata and a gala concert of youth ensembles in Vienna, and Aida at the Arena di Verona.
In short, in his eightieth year, and his sixty-first year as a professional opera singer, the amazing Plácido Domingo shows no signs of slowing down.
