January 21, 2011. Copyright 2011, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Spanish tenor Placido Domingo -- who achieved huge popular success in a trio with Pavarotti and Carreras -- is 70
By Susan Shepherd

LONDON, January 21, Graphic News:  "If I rest, I rust" runs the epigram on the website of Placido Domingo, the Madrid-born singer, dubbed the "King of Opera", whose unusually flexible voice has kept him in work since the age of 16 and whose recordings have encompassed everything from classical to contemporary. Forced, briefly, into a six-week break last year, following emergency surgery to remove a cancerous growth in his colon, Domingo -- his name means "Placid Sunday" -- shows no sign of letting up as he moves into his seventies. This July he will, once again, oversee "Operalia", an annual competition he founded to showcase the operatic world's rising stars. This year's contest takes place over seven days, in Moscow. Then there are the two opera companies he runs, in Washington DC and Los Angeles, assisted by his wife of 50 years, the Mexican-born soprano-turned-director, Marta Ornelas. The couple, who have two sons, met as students at Mexico City's Conservatory of Music, Domingo's parents having moved to Mexico with their zarzuela -- or musical theatre -- company when young Placido was just eight. Originally a pianist, who went to the Conservatory to study piano and conducting, his talent for singing was quickly recognised during vocal training. In 1961, in Monterrey, he made his operatic debut, as Alfredo in La Traviata, followed, the same year, by his first U.S. appearance opposite Joan Sutherland in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor. He was still only 20 years old.

Now with a record-breaking career behind him -- Domingo has sung 225 performances of Verdi's Otello and 224 of Tosca -- the famous tenor voice has moderated to a baritone. An impresario, conductor and general ambassador for his art, Domingo is famously true to his first name -- the calm and charming opposite of the tantrum-throwing star. High emotion is reserved for the opera house; offstage, family life remains a priority. Yet the two overlapped, notably, in 1985 in the drama of Mexico's worst recorded earthquake: among the estimated 10,000 dead were four of the singer's close relatives. Domingo threw himself into the search and rescue effort and went on to raise huge sums towards the reconstruction of the capital city. He was later honoured by the Mexican president and his statue now stands in a public park there.

With fellow Spaniard Jose Carreras and Italian counterpart Luciano Pavarotti, Domingo will be forever associated with football's World Cup, the trio having first performed together on the eve of the 1990 final in Rome. The "Three Tenors" achieved phenomenal popularity, giving gala concerts at the World Cups of 1994, 1998 and 2002, and winning credit for bringing operatic and traditional favourites -- such as O Sole Mio -- to the masses. Their live recording of that 1990 debut, conducted by Zubin Mehta, remains the best-selling classical music album, according to Guinness World Records. To mark Domingo's 70th birthday, Deutsche Grammophon has released a limited edition boxed set of no less than 26 compact discs -- The Opera Collection -- which runs to over 30 hours of recordings by the nine-times Grammy award winner, while Domingo himself will perform the role of Oreste in Gluck’s Iphigenie en Tauride at Madrid's Teatro Real opera house as part of his birthday celebrations.
/ENDS