Plácido Domingo is recognized as one of the finest and most influential singing actors in the history of opera.
He has sung more than 150 different roles to date, with more than 3900 total career performances. An integral part of LA Opera since its earliest days, he served as the company's general director from 2003 to 2019.
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 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 attracted 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, Montréal Symphony, National Symphony, London Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Berlin Philharmonic. In 2018, he made his debut at the Bayreuth Festival as a conductor, leading performances of Die Walküre. In 1993, he founded the international voice competition Operalia.
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 additional Verdi baritone roles to his repertoire, with appearances in Don Carlo, Rigoletto, The Two 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 of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, and Zurga in The Pearl Fishers (his 150th role, as of August 23, 2018, which he performed at the Salzburg Festival).
In addition to numerous concerts worldwide, his singing engagements for the 2018/19 season include Giorgio Germont in La Traviata at the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, and the Royal Opera House Muscat; the title role of Gianni Schicchi with the Metropolitan Opera; Rodrigo in Don Carlo and Juanillo in El Gato Montés for LA Opera; the title role of Simon Boccanegra with the Vienna State Opera; the title role of Macbeth with Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden; and the title role of Nabucco with the Semperoper Dresden. Further engagements include Giorgio Germont in La Traviata at the Munich Opera Festival and Giacomo in Giovanna d’Arco with Madrid’s Teatro Real.
His conducting engagements for the season include a concert of Spanish music with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, a gala concert with the Vienna Philharmonic at La Scala in Milan, as well as productions of Aida for the Metropolitan Opera and of La Traviata for the Royal Opera House Muscat. (PlacidoDomingo.com)
