Plácido Domingo

https://www.placidodomingo.com/timeline

Plácido Domingo is a world-renowned, multifaceted artist. Recognized as one of the finest and most influential singing actors in the history of opera, he is also a conductor and a major force as an opera administrator. His repertoire now encompasses more than 150 roles, with over 4000 career performances.

Singer, conductor and administrator 
Singer and conductor, tenor and baritone, eclectic artist, acclaimed by the public on stages all over the world.  Defined Renaissance man, awarded with honorary titles and prizes also for his humanitarian commitment.

Promoter of young talents and founder of Operalia. Worldwide Ambassador of Spanish Culture and Zarzuela. 

Extraordinarily versatile, he has been general director and promoter of opera with Carreras and Pavarotti.  

Performer of world premieres of operas, starred in opera movies, pioneer of crossover and winner of 12 Grammy Awards.  

Conductor with more than 600 performances. During his teens, when he was enrolled in Mexico City’s National Conservatory of Music, Plácido Domingo observed the conducting course of the celebrated Russian conductor Igor Markevitch, and he did some conducting with his parents’ zarzuela company. His professional conducting debut took place in 1973, when he led a performance of La Traviata with New York City Opera at Lincoln Center. Through the end of 2018, he had conducted some 607 performances altogether, including operas and concerts.

His career has continued for more than half a century and for this he has been celebrated at the Operas of New York, Vienna, Verona, Milan and Buenos Aires.

On November 21, 2012, Domingo was appointed Goodwill Ambassador for UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization), in recognition of his "exceptional artistic career, his inestimable support for young opera musicians through the Operalia competition, and his dedication to the values and ideals of UNESCO.”

In 2010 Domingo became president of Europa Nostra, an association that works to safeguard Europe’s cultural heritage whenever it is threatened by natural calamities, by human beings, or by neglect or even ignorance.

Prices
13 October 2009 Winning the inaugural Birgit Nilsson Prize

In her will, the great Swedish soprano Birgit Nilsson (1918-2005) left instructions for a prize of $1,000,000 to be awarded approximately once every three years to a person or institution that has made a major contribution to opera.This is the most generous prize in the world of classical music. Nilsson personally decided who the first prize-winner was to be: Plácido Domingo. Domingo is using these funds to help support Operalia.

In 2000, Domingo was a recipient of one of the Kennedy Center Honors, alongside Angela Lansbury, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Clint Eastwood, and Chuck Berry.

From 1996 to 2003, Domingo was Artistic Director of Washington National Opera, which is based at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and from 2003 to 2011 he was WNO’s General Director.

Also in 2003, Domingo became General Director of Los Angeles Opera, after having been Artistic Director since the 1980s; his current contract there runs until 2019.

In 1993, Domingo founded Operalia, an annual international voice competition, which has helped to start the careers of many singers who have since become major figures on the world’s stages – among many others, Nina Stemme, Joyce DiDonato, José Cura, Rolando Villazon, Erwin Schrott, Pretty Yende, Eric Owens, Susanna Phillips, and Anthony Roth Costanzo.

Operalia is held once a year, each time in a different country.

In 1991, Domingo was honored with Spain’s Premio Príncipe de Asturias, which is given to people or institutions of exceptional accomplishments in the arts and sciences. Also in his native country, he has received the Gran Cruz de la Orden de Isabel la Católica and the Medalla de la Orden de las Artes y las Letras de España. Other awards include the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the United States 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 also received honorary doctorates from the University of Oxford, New York University, and Georgetown University in Washington, DC, for his lifelong commitment and contribution to music and the arts. In 1993 he was presented with a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

On July 7, 1990, the eve of the FIFA World Cup soccer games in Rome, Domingo, together with his fellow-singers Luciano Pavarotti and José Carreras and conductor Zubin Mehta, gave a charity concert that was viewed by millions of people around the world and was a huge success. This led to many other performances of The Three Tenors, not only at the successive World Cup events (1994, 1998, and 2002), but also in a world tour in 1996-97 and at various other moments.

In October 1982, Domingo sang at a benefit concert at the Vatican, had an audience with Pope John Paul II (he had met Pope Paul VI in 1970) and was made a Commendatore of the Italian Republic by President Sandro Pertini. Over the years, he has met the presidents, prime ministers, and royal families of many countries all over the world.

In the fall of 1973, while he was singing in productions of La traviata and Il trovatore at the Met, Domingo made his debut as an opera conductor with New York City Opera, also in La traviata.

"I owe my love of music to the zarzuelas I so often heard from the time I was a small boy."

All of Domingo’s early musical memories are tied in with the zarzuela, which he heard constantly, practically from the day he was born. “The zarzuelas fascinated me, and I still love them,” he says.

He has devoted much energy, over the years, to keeping this art form alive throughout the Spanish-speaking world and beyond. “Just as in other art forms, so with the zarzuela there are great, good, so-so, bad, and terrible works,” he says, “but the best of them are very much worth performing.”

Plácido Domingo was born in the Barrio de Salamanca, a typical Madrid neighborhood, on January 21, 1941