Plácido Domingo

Plácido Domingo didn't start out singing at the Met or working with cult directors. He began playing piano in dives in Mexico City and dubbing zarzuela choruses to pay the weekly rent.

At eighteen, he took the stage of the Teatro Degollado in Guadalajara as a baritone in Marina. Shortly after, he discovered that his natural voice belonged to the dramatic tenor range, because his ambition always outgrew his starting limitations.

Zeffirelli's celluloid and the sweat of Cinecittà

Franco Zeffirelli hated the crude dubbing of studio opera adaptations. In 1982, he brought Domingo and Teresa Stratas onto a set with massive sets to shoot La Traviata, forcing the cast to sing over soundtracks recorded by James Levine with the Metropolitan Opera orchestra.

The shoot was suffocating, with the camera hunting for real sweat and minimal gestures. Zeffirelli demanded tight shots typical of dramatic cinema rather than the distance usual in the opera box.

Film critics applauded enthusiastically.

Two years later, Francesco Rosi took him to Seville and Ronda to shoot Carmen on location, in dusty landscapes under the blazing sun. While he played Don José in forty-degree heat in the shade, Rosi made him repeat full takes of extreme physical exertion until his voice was nearly gone.

In 1986, he reunited with Zeffirelli for Otello, a grim production in which thick makeup irritated his skin after twelve hours a day under the lights of Cinecittà. That trilogy of films proved that filmed opera could earn box office money without betraying the original score. But the tenor wanted more than conventional theatrical distribution.

The technical madness of going live in Rome

In July 1992, producer Andrea Andermann came up with a major technical gamble called Tosca: In the Places and at the Hours of Tosca. The project broadcast the opera to more than one hundred countries from the real locations described in Puccini's libretto, and at the exact times of the dramatic story.

The Madrid-born singer performed the first act at the Basilica of Sant’Andrea della Valle in broad daylight. Hours later, he recreated Cavaradossi's torture at the Palazzo Farnese as night fell over the city.

And at dawn, they shot the tenor on the terrace of Castel Sant'Angelo.

The symphony orchestra played several kilometers away in a closed auditorium while Zubin Mehta conducted, watching video monitors. Domingo wore a tiny earpiece hidden in his ear to synchronize his voice with the remote stands.

A simple satellite glitch could have wrecked a production with a ten-million-dollar budget broadcast live to one billion viewers.

Dressing room shadows and the impossible retirement

For four decades, his performance schedule defied medical logic. He took on artistic direction in Washington and Los Angeles, conducted dozens of productions from the podium and racked up thousands of performances without taking a single sabbatical semester in forty years.

Around 2009, the wear and tear on his vocal cords pushed him back to his younger register as a baritone in Simon Boccanegra. So he adapted his repertoire to his new vocal range so he would not miss a single month on stage.

Stopping was never an option for him.

In August 2019, an investigation by the Associated Press news agency compiled accusations of sexual harassment and abuse of power against him from more than twenty women in the opera world. The impact in North America was relentless.

In October 2019, he stepped down as general director of the Los Angeles Opera, and American institutions canceled his contracts en masse. In Spain, the Ministry of Culture suspended his commitments at the Teatro de la Zarzuela, while other European opera houses chose to keep him on the bill.

Between 2024 and 2025, he took on opera engagements and recitals in concert halls in Vienna, Paris, Munich and Tokyo. His professional catalog includes one hundred fifty-one different operatic roles performed on stage.

In his final regular season at the Los Angeles Opera, his fee per performance came to one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars gross.