Biography of Placido Domingo

About the Artist

When historians look back to the turn of the 21st Century, one singer will stand out as one who defined the awesome power and monumental humanity of Verdi's Otello and Don Carlo. They will read with awe of a romantic tenor who epitomized the heroic intensity of Massenet's legendary Cid Campeador, one who embodied the romantic longing of Puccini's Rodolfo, another who found bel canto subtleties in Wagner's stentorian Siegmund and radiant hope in his innocent Parsifal. Historians will note the name of a tenor who revitalized the Spanish zarzuela, and of a conductor who brought a singer's dramatic instincts to the podium.. What will puzzle future historians is this: Could all these things have been done by one man? They could, if his name is Plácido Domingo.

Blessed with a distinctive, instantly identifiable golden voice as well as with canny theatrical instincts, Domingo also has brought to the world's musical banquet a rare musical intelligence and a superlative mastery of the musician's craft. With 115 roles so far in his repertory, he has sung more different parts than any tenor in the annals of music. He has made more than 100 opera recordings, and more than 50 on film including Zeffirelli's La Traviata and Otello and Rossini's Carmen. Countless millions have been touched and thrilled by his teaming up with two old friends in the unprecedented phenomenon known simply as "The Three Tenors.'' "To be a tenor today...one must have vast musical intelligence, a good physical appearance and, hopefully, a charismatic stage presence. Above all, one must be an expressive singer and actor. When all these qualities are wedded to a great voice, then one is in the presence of a great artist,'' said José Carreras. "And for me, Plácido Domingo represents this ideal.''

The son of the acclaimed zarzuela singers Plácido Domingo and Pepita Embil, José Plácido Domingo Embil was eight years old when his parents took their musical company on a tour of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. "They fell in love with Mexico,'' the tenor recalled years later, "and said ‘Let's stay for one more week'.'' That week became a lifetime.

Domingo studied conducting and piano-curiously, not singing-in Mexico City's National Conservatory of Music. It was in Mexico that Domingo made his singing debut, as a baritone in the zarzuela Gigantes y Cabezudos, then in a production of My Fair Lady in Mexico City that was soon followed by the role of Alfredo in La Traviata in Monterrey in 1961.

In 1962, Domingo married the soprano Marta Ormelas, and the couple moved to Tel Aviv to become members of the Hebrew National Opera. He was discovered singing the world premiere of Ginastera's Don Rodrigo, the opera that inaugurated New York City Opera's residence at Lincoln Center in 1966.

Major debuts followed in rapid succession as the world began to experience the Domingo phenomenon: Tosca at the Hamburg State Opera and Don Carlo at the Vienna State Opera in 1967; Adriana Lecouvreur at the Metropolitan Opera, Turandot in Verona, La Boheme in San Francisco and Turandot in Verona in 1969, La Gioconda in his hometown of Madrid in 1970; Tosca in Covent Garden in 1971, La Boheme at the Bavarian State Opera in 1972, Don Carlo at the Paris Opera in 1973 and at the Salzburg Festival in 1975. His Bayreuth Festival debut waited until 1992, in Parsifal.

By then, Domingo also had made a name for himself as a conductor, leading musical forces from London's Covent Garden to New York's Metropolitan Opera and Washington's Kennedy Center. As an administrator, he was the music director of the World's Fair in Sevilla, the founder and artistic director of the Los Angeles Opera and the artistic director of the Washington Opera in the nation's capital. He is the founder of Operalia, the biggest annual vocal competition in the world. And he holds the world record for once having received 101 curtain-calls after an "Otello" performance in Vienna, which earned him a place in The Guinness Book of Records."

Laurence Olivier saw Domingo in Otello and, furious, told Franco Zeffirelli: "You realize that Domingo plays Othello as well as I do, and he has that voice!'' Gian Carlo Menotti, who composed the opera Goya for Domingo, says that the tenor "knows what he is singing about, he interprets every word and he not only interprets the musical line but ... like Callas ... the emotion implied by the words.''

The singer himself is disarmingly modest, crediting solid musical education and hard work for much of his success. "If I rest, I rust,'' Domingo claims as his motto. He does not rest, and his indefatigable efforts have opened up a universe of music for millions and millions of grateful fans.