Plácido Domingo is 82 years old today.
A Spanish tenor, conductor and arts administrator, Domingo has sung 147 different roles. One of “The Three Tenors,” he has more recently taken on conducting opera and concert performances, and is also the general director of the Los Angeles Opera in California.
Born in the Retiro district of Madrid, Spain, he moved to Mexico in 1949 with his family, who ran a zarzuela company. He studied piano at first privately and later at the National Conservatory of Music in Mexico City.
In 1957, Domingo made his first professional appearance, performing with his mother in a concert at Mérida, Yucatán. He made his opera debut performing in Manuel Fernández Caballero's zarzuela, Gigantes y cabezudos, singing a baritone role.
At that time, he was working with his parents' zarzuela company, taking baritone roles and as an accompanist for other singers.
In 1959, Domingo auditioned for the Mexico National Opera as a baritone, but was then asked to sight-read some arias and lines in the tenor range. Finally, he was accepted in the National Opera as a tenor comprimario and as a tutor for other singers.
He provided backup vocals for Los Black Jeans in 1958, a rock-and-roll band led by César Costa. He studied piano and conducting, but made his stage debut acting in a minor role in 1959 at the Teatro Degollado in Guadalajara as Pascual in Marina.
In 1961, Domingo made his operatic debut in a leading role as Alfredo in La traviata at Monterrey (Maria Teresa Montoya theater) and, later in the same year, his debut in the United States with the Dallas Civic Opera, where he sang the role of Arturo in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor opposite Joan Sutherland in the title role.
His official debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York occurred on September 28, 1968, when he substituted for Franco Corelli, in Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur singing with Renata Tebaldi.
Since then Domingo has continued performing, singing many of the same roles, but adding new roles — among them the title roles in Wagner's Parsifal and Mozart's Idomeneo; Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia as Figaro; Wagner's Die Walküre as Siegmund; Lehár's The Merry Widow as Danilo and Alfano's Cyrano de Bergerac as Cyrano.
From the middle 1990s to early in 2008 alone, he added about 40 new roles to his repertoire, covering opera in six different languages (English, Italian, French, German, Russian and Spanish).
In August 2019, Domingo was accused by multiple women of sexual harassment. Eight singers and a dancer said that Domingo sexually harassed them in incidents that spanned three decades from the late 1980s. The alleged harassment took place at venues including opera companies where the musician held top positions.
It was reported that Domingo's sexual advances towards younger women were an "open secret" in the opera world. Domingo issued a statement, stating "The allegations from these unnamed individuals dating back as many as 30 years are deeply troubling, and as presented, inaccurate," adding that "I recognize that the rules and standards by which we are—and should be—measured against today are very different than they were in the past.”
In September 2019, the Metropolitan Opera announced it would be ending its relationship with Domingo in light of the allegations of sexual harassment. In October 2019, Domingo resigned as general director of the Los Angeles Opera, and withdrew from all forthcoming performances with that company, stating that "recent accusations that have been made against me in the press have created an atmosphere in which my ability to serve this company that I so love has been compromised."