Plácido Domingo

Mariinsky Theatre Guest Soloist

Plácido Domingo is recognized not only as one of the finest and most influential singing actors in the history of opera but also as a conductor. And as General Director of Los Angeles Opera (2003–2019) he was a major force as an opera administrator.

Domingo’s vocal repertoire encompasses more than 150 stage roles – a number unmatched by any other celebrated singer in opera history. The list includes not only tenor roles but also the principal baritone roles in Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, Rigoletto, I due Foscari, La traviata, Giovanna d’Arco, Il trovatore, as well as that of Massenet’s Thaïs and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, which he has added during the last few years.

His more than one hundred recordings of complete operas, compilations of arias and duets, and crossover discs include Deutsche Grammophon’s anthology of the complete Verdi arias for tenor and another of various baritone arias by the same composer. For EMI he has recorded albums of Wagnerian roles that he has not sung on stage: Siegfried in both Siegfried and Götterdämmerung and Tristan in a complete recording of Tristan und Isolde. His extensive work in the recording studio has earned him twelve GRAMMY Awards and three Latin GRAMMY Awards, and he has won Emmy Awards for the television film Homage to Seville and for the Met’s Silver Gala programme. He was the Latin Recording Academy’s “Person of the Year” in 2010. Domingo has also made more than fifty music videos in addition to four feature films of operas: Carmen, La traviata, Otello and Tosca, in addition to a Rigoletto shot in and broadcast from Mantua, where the opera takes place.

He has conducted multiple opera performances with the Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera House (Covent Garden), the Vienna State Opera and Los Angeles Opera among many other ensembles, and symphonic concerts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra (Washington), the London Symphony Orchestra, the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and numerous other orchestras. In 1990 Domingo and his colleagues José Carreras and Luciano Pavarotti spontaneously formed the Three Tenors, which performed with enormous success all over the world.

In 1993 Domingo founded Operalia, an annual international voice competition. Domingo was also the prime mover behind Washington National Opera’s Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program and Los Angeles Opera’s Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program, both of which are designed to nurture and support the careers of opera’s future standard-bearers. Domingo is also Artistic Advisor to the Youth Orchestra of the Americas.

In his native Spain Plácido Domingo has been awarded the Gran Cruz de la Orden de Isabel la Católica, the Medalla de la Orden de las Artes y las Letras de España and the Premio Prinicipe de Asturias de las Artes; and in Mexico, where he grew up, he received the Aguila Azteca. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the USA and the titles of Commander of the Legion of Honor in France, Honorary Knight of the British Empire and both Grande Ufficiale and Cavaliere di Gran Croce of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. He has received honorary doctorates from Oxford University and New York University for his lifelong commitment and contribution to music and the arts. In October 2009 King Carl Gustaf of Sweden presented him with the first Birgit Nilsson Prize (at one million dollars, the most generous prize in the world of classical music) for his outstanding achievements in opera; in accepting the award, Domingo said that it would “greatly benefit my annual competition, Operalia”. On 21 November 2012 he was appointed as UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador. In 2006 he conducted Verdi’s Requiem in Warsaw, to commemorate the first anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s passing.

Plácido Domingo made his debut at the Mariinsky Theatre in 1992, performing the title role in Otello. In 2001 he sang the part of Siegmund at the premiere of Die Walküre directed by Gottfried Pilz.

Repertoire at the Mariinsky Theatre:
Otello (Verdi’s Otello)
Siegmund (Die Walküre)
Parsifal (Parsifal, concert performance)
Nabucco (Nabucco)
Simon Boccanegra (Simon Boccanegra)
Macbeth (Macbeth)
Giorgio Germont (La traviata)

Domingo also appears as a conductor at the Mariinsky Theatre, he has conducted Aida, La traviata, Die Walküre, Il trovatore, Samson et Dalila.
Information for June 2021