In 1949, when he was eight, they created a zarzuela company of their own in Mexico, and he and his younger sister joined them there For the next 13 years, Mexico City was his home. Later this year, his recording of Tristan and Isolde will add the 122nd role to his repertoire.Domingo was born in Madrid in 1941. (Soccer is still one of his great loves, mainly as a spectator, but occasionally as a participant in benefit games.)In addition, he took piano lessons from the age of eight and spent much time with his parents' theatre company, taking occasional roles, and absorbed a great deal about musical theatre.At 14, he entered Mexico's National Conservatory of Music to study piano and conducting, but he faced severe difficulties when he married at 16 and became a father at 17. He went to school there and, like most other Spanish and Latin American boys, he developed a passion for football and the corrida. In 1992, he performed at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany, where he sang the title role in Wagner's Parsifal. If he so wished, he would never have to sing any other role". (Laurence Olivier saw his performance and remarked that Domingo acted the role as well as he had done himself - "and the bloody fellow can sing as well!").In the late 1980s, he began to perform Wagner, which requires a more powerful tenor voice, specifically a heldentenor, than Italian operas do.
Over the years, it has darkened and deepened, allowing him to move into more heavyweight parts, such as Verdi's Otello, one of the summits of any tenor's aspirations and one of the most arduous.His debut in the opera in 1975 was instantly acclaimed: Opera magazine wrote: "He sang the role so magnificently that every opera house will now want to stage the work for him. Earlier this year, he said he thought he still had another five years as a singer, and given his good health and exceptional stamina there is little reason to doubt his prediction.His repertoire includes an amazing 121 roles, a figure which has earnt him a place in The Guinness Book of Records, and they cover a particularly wide range from Rameau in the early 18th century to new works by contemporary composers like Ginastera and Gian Carlo Menotti His voice is characterised by an unusual flexibility. Each year, he sings 70 to 80 performances, a large number for any opera singer at any age, and he has made well over 3,000 appearances during his lifetime.He also has a separate career as a conductor, and is general director of the Washington National Opera and the Los Angeles Opera companies. At an age at which most of his contemporaries have retired from the stage, or turn up for just a few carefully scheduled galas, he is working as hard as he did 30 years ago. Domingo's star-status and physical presence certainly contribute to his charisma on stage". Not everyone can afford Covent Garden prices, but we'll all have a chance to hear this extraordinary performance next Monday evening when the BBC Proms is giving a concert performance of Die Walk?at the Royal Albert Hall.What is also extraordinary is that Domingo is now 64. So have the South Sudan authorities decided to bury the hatchet after catching a glimpse of Total's wallet? A peace deal would remove one of the big legal uncertainties hanging over White Nile, whose shares rose 5p to 110p.. The Royal Opera House's production of Wagner's Die Walk?received many critical raspberries when it opened earlier this year, but it was a very different matter at its revival last week.
This performance ignited long before Wotan's magic fire descended Wagner thrives on performers who really fill their roles. What had altered was the cast, and, in particular, Placido Domingo as Siegmund. Critics were ecstatic: "Domingo's voice is almost as burnished, thrilling and secure as it was 20 years ago", said The Times and Edward Seckerson in The Independent observed that "when he is on stage everybody raises their game. The deal would certainly be extraordinary, since Total claims that a 20-year-old agreement with the central Sudanese government means it already owns exploration rights that the South Sudanese more recently granted to White Nile.
