Plácido Domingo

Plácido Domingo (born January 21, 1941) is a famous Spanish opera singer. Though he started off his career as a baritone, he quickly retrained as a tenor and became well-known for a voice that was versatile, strong and possessed of

Plácido Domingo (born January 21, 1941) is a famous Spanish opera singer. Though he started off his career as a baritone, he quickly retrained as a tenor and became well-known for a voice that was versatile, strong and possessed of a ringing and clear tone throughout its range; his repertoire includes roles in French (Faust, Werther), German (Lohengrin, Parsifal) and Italian (Il Trovatore, Don Carlo, Otello). In recent years, Domingo has also turned his hand to conducting opera. He also been appointed artistic director of two opera companies, first the Washington National Opera and later the Los Angeles Opera.

Domingo was born in Madrid, Spain, but moved to Mexico as a child with his family, who ran a zarzuela company . In Mexico City he studied music at the National Conservatory. He provided backup vocals for Los Black Jeans in 1958, a rock-and-roll band lead by César Costa. He learned piano and conducting, but made his stage debut as a tenor in 1959 as Alfredo in La Traviata in Monterrey, Mexico. In 1962 he joined the Israeli National Opera, and first performed at the Met in New York in 1968. (He would open there eighteen times, breaking the record of the great Enrico Caruso.) He made his debut at La Scala in 1969 and at Covent Garden in 1971. He received Kennedy Center Honors in 2000.