Breaking: Placido Domingo accepts major award from the State of Israel

Breaking: Placido Domingo accepts major award from the State of Israel

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norman lebrecht

January 10, 2012

The great tenor got his first professional break at an opera company in Tel Aviv.

He is now being honoured by President Shimon Peres and the Knesset with the country’s largest arts prize. Details still coming in.

In this news report, he describes his memories of singing in Tel Aviv and his favourite foods. He even sings a line in Hebrew.

Comments

  • ghillie forrest says:

    I think the nost significant detail is that he is sharing the Wof Prize for the Arts with Sir Simon Rattle.

  • Amanda Rosenberg says:

    How sad, that such a great singer will sing will prostitute himself in occupied land, whose racism and brutatlity against the Palestinians is so shameful and criminal. I have always loved this singer and do not believe that politics should affect my love of music, but I am shocked. Even Daniel Baremboim, who supported Israel for a long time, refused to attend the 60th anniversary of the founding of this wicked colonial state, because he finally recognised how evil it is.

  • Carolyn Barnett-Goldstein says:

    Mr. Lebrecht, I assume , you are the moderator of this blog. Thus, I ask, is this, yet, another anti-Semitic, anti-Israel blog that permits the garbage propaganda to be displayed? If so, I have no interest in pursuing your posts and wasting my time. I would appreciate an answer, please. I will say, your post on Alexis Weissenberg, whom I knew, was very accurate and appropriate. He really was a fine human being, warm, giving, and one who went out of his way to understand other’s frailties. The Telegraph’s obit is undeserved, using unattributed concepts
    others wrote, including, if I recall correctly, what Alexis wrote on his website.
    As an aside, the above commenter is the second extant individual named Rosenberg,
    who promotes these anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, hate-filled lies in regards to the Jews. I find it an odd circumstance of history that one of Hitler’s main anti-Semitic policy advisers was, also, named Rosenberg. He was a non-Jew. Didn’t Barenboim receive a significant award from Israel? Barenboim has written his legacy and his children and grandchildren will have to live with it. That’s his gift to them.

    • Ms Barnett-Goldstein,
      Our moderation policy excludes personal abuse, outright lies, obvious spam and clinical insanity. We accept a wide variety of political opinion, provided it does not cross one of those lines. In general, the more extreme the view the more likely it is to damage the cause it purports to uphold and the reputation of whoever wrote it. We assume that sane readers are mature enough not to be offended by such rants. best wishes, NL

    • Martin Locher says:

      Ms Barnett-Goldstein,

      Just because one comment is anti-Israel, does not mean the whole blog is anti-Semitic. Neighter does an anti-Israel post mean, that the person who posted it is an anti-Semite and neighter does an anti-Iseal post mean the person is a Nazi. Maybe you are a bit over-sensitive? To me that comment by Amanda Rosenberg is not worth a second thought in regards to this blog. The Isreal discussion belongs to politics, not arts.

      In a general note. The constant Jew/anti-Jew discussions in classical music, frankly speaking, totally piss me off. Nowhere else, I experience more seriously meant racism – from both sides. Sometimes it seems that, to some, criticizing a Jewish musician is a worse offence than knocking down a Catholic one with a baseball bat.

      Regards
      Martin

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