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Congratulations to Maestro Placido Domingo on receiving the prestigious Premio Cappuccilli. The award was presented to Maestro on stage in front of all public after Maestro’s superb performance of I due Foscari at Teatro del Maggio in Firenze on May 28, 2022.
See Ecclesiastes, 1:2
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Is Italy in a contest of sorts with Putin, about whose classical music ‘business’ is more corrupted? To call a 80 years old singer ‘Maestro’ , and call his participation a ‘superb performance’ borders on delusion requiring medical therapy.
Domingo has never been a baritone. He was a tenor with a very short, unstable top, who dragged himself through a lot of roles he shouldn’t have sung, mostly by pretending the notes he couldn’t sing, and the agility bits he could sing, weren’t in the score. Conductors were similarly afflicted. Then, some twenty years ago, he discovered that nothing had survived of his short top. Audiences had noticed this at least five years prior. At that point he embarked on the baritone scam. There’s more to a baritone than the absence of the tenor top. And now we’re asked to believe that not only is he a Verdi baritone (he wasn’t even a Verdi tenor), he sings ‘superbly’ at eighty. When pigs fly. There is enough evidence in the internet how ‘superbly’ he sings.
Why can’t he stick to zarzuela recitals? He won’t be in anybody’s way there. Why must he spoil opera performances with his presence, and why are opera houses complicit to this scam?
Possibly because people are happy to pay money to see him?
Just throwing that out there.
Or should we just all do as you say?
Or possibly because people want to _hear_ the other singers in the cast and have no other option than to _see_ him too? Seeing him being the operative word. Give it a thought.
You certainly shouldn’t do as I say. I am actually at a loss where did I told you, or any other member of the _audience_ , what to do.
I do not agree to everything said by guest, but the last paragraph is certainly true.
Why don’t you fucking ask the opera houses then……
Plácido Domingo will go down in history as one of the greatest singers of all time. Beautiful timbre, brilliant phrasing, great acting, wonderful colours. I don’t care if he had a short top. I care about emotions. When he is on stage I believe him.
Well George, I can’t pull emotions out of my hat, I get them from singing. If someone sings badly, the only emotion I get is either embarrassment on behalf of the singer, if I know he sings badly because he is indisposed, or contempt, if I know he sings like this since the last century. The beautiful timbre, brilliant phrasing, great acting, wonderful colours are only in your imagination. Domingo’s voice has never been brilliant. Present day Domingo has a grainy, even gravely timbre, no phrasing, no acting (he can barely move around), no colours bar grey, and no dynamics whatever.
Domingo, Netrebko…Italians seem to be great at being judges of character.
They are. They tried to elect Muti to the Italian presidency and they most likely will put him in the Senate for a lifetime … so to speak … appointment.
And the American who thought the Trump-Stormy Daniels deal was as low as one can get get. Just wait, nobody beats the “genius” of the Italians.
You seem to have a Muti obsession but have yet to say why. Please do.
what would Piero say….
The Marschallin rightly says ‘weiss er nicht wann die Sach ein End hat’ – that one should tell the miseranle Mr Pereira too
My guess would be that this award was another dig at #MeToo cooked up by Maggio Superintendent Alexander Pereira–perhaps with the help of Zubin Mehta. In reality, it only highlights the issues. “What is crooked cannot be straightened…”
It must be cool to be so in-the-know about all this useless info. When do you graduate from high school?
Why is this “utterly meaningless”?? Congratulations to Maestro Domingo, one of the greatest singers ever!
Well done Hugo for championing a great singer who was also the best operatic actor. My memories of his performance as Cavaradossi in Tosca at Covent Garden will stay with me for ever!
Your memories of him decades ago may stay with you forever – may stay even with me forever. But audiences shouldn’t be made to pay _now_ to put up with him in otherwise acceptable casts. People aren’t paying _now_ for your memories, or mine. An eighty years old is vocally finished, it’s that simple. I don’t see why people should pay for him to make a mockery of the score because he can’t sing even the simplest dynamics, and Verdi is full of dynamics. If he wants to humor nostalgic fans in zarzuela recitals, perfectly fine with me.
To call his performances ‘superb’ at this age, is a mockery of operatic singing. No one sings superbly at eighty. Operatic singing is a very athletic activity. You wouldn’t call an eighty years old athlete’s ‘performance’ superb, would you? Would you like to see him participating in competitions? Competitions are an athlete’s professional performances. Opera performances are a singer’s professional performances. If a former athlete wants to jog in the park, perfectly fine with me. If a former singer wants to give recital concerts for fans and bask in their adoration, also fine with me.
I agree. Also Domingo has made a fortune singing and recording tenor roles for many decades. I wish professional singers would stick to the vocal ranges they are famous for instead of taking roles in other ranges. There are many young and up and coming baritones with wonderful voices who will never get the opportunities that Domingo has enjoyed. Stop being greedy and allow others to achieve their goals.
Named after a *real* baritone. One of the best.
At least this award, unlike Muti’s Russian awards, hasn’t been handed out to the recipient by Putin.
Pereira, Domingo, and Muti are best buddies. All three of them share the same contempt for the ME2 movement. All three of them are deeply unethical, all three of them are a disgrace. They have very little time left on their respective biological clocks.
The only unethical one here is you. Who made you a judge, jury, and executioner? Where you there as a witness to know first hand, or are you an idiot who believes the fake news. Kiss off, creep. Nobody gives a rat’s rear end what you think or who you are. Carry on with your miserable life.
It doesn’t matter how long is left on maestro Muti’s and maestro Domino’s life clock. Their mankind enlightening legacy has already reached eternity!
I’m much less concern about Me2 deniers than with sickening hatred spelled on this pages all over and over again. While CHICAGO RAT continues his roaming through Chicago’s undergrounds, I’ll continue buying and listening every CD I can get my hand on with Domingo, Muti, Netrebko, Gergiev, etc. And I enjoy it immensely!
‘Their mankind enlightening legacy has already reached eternity!’
You possibly missed your vocation. How about writing speeches for politicians? After you polish your English, this goes without saying.
‘I’ll continue buying and listening every CD I can get my hand on with Domingo’
More power to you, but NL’s post isn’t about Domingo’s studio recordings he did 35 years ago, it’s about Domingo singing live at 80, or pretending to do so. Far from me to begrudge you the glorification of the past if this is your pleasure, but other people live in the present, and when the present features Domingo at 80 spoiling an otherwise acceptable* cast with his live ‘singing’, people with ears will complain. Meaning me. Chicagorat’s crusade is his own.
*barely acceptable.
Maestro Domingo deserves every single award he gets. And I agree with Hugo he is one of the greatest singers ever! Not just a singer but an actor as well. Plus being a humanitarian…….
Placido’s so called “short top” in the tenor register was more a result of an insecure technique than vocal limitations. Like Renata. Tebaldi ( also the victim of erratic study ) he presented a glorious, rich and full timbre in the middle register at the expense of an easy passagio. He remains , at 82 , a courageous , unique and brilliant artist In a Class of His Own Keep. Filling the. House , Maestro. Placido !!!!
There is, perhaps, a grain of Truth here. But just as Ettore Bastianini carried his originally bass voice up to an high A to create what is arguably the greatest dramatic baritone of the last century, so did Domingo to create a similarly great dramatic tenor as is evident, for example, in his Otello (by Verdi, isn’t it?), accompanied, of course, with his superb acting.
Domingo _never_ was a dramatic tenor, neither in the original, 19th century sense of the term, nor in the 20rh century sense.
Vanitas vanitatum. Omnia vanitas.
Is there no place left where people can just enjoy an artist’s work without becoming an amateur sleuth and judge beforehand? Good lord, most of you sound like amped up George Babbits, parading your moral superiority for us all to admire. Who made you marshals of what’s proper, and infallible about judging situations using only publicly available detail?
As for Domingo’s voice, he had a fine voice and a fine career for over 40 years. If he he wants to be a latter-day Melchior my advice is to not listen to him if he offends you so. I don’t listen to recordings of the screechy Callas or Albenase or the painful Peerce
‘he had a fine voice and a fine career for over 40 years’
_Had_ is here the operative word.
‘If he he wants to be a latter-day Melchior my advice is to not listen to him if he offends you so.’
I’d like to know how is the public supposed to not listen to him if he is part of the cast. Should we cover our ears when he sings and listen only to the others? What kind of opera experience is this? It would be easy to avoid him if he’d stick to recitals. It’s the same as with your screechy Callas or Albenase(sic) or the painful Peerce recordings, easily avoidable. Unfortunately Domingo keeps foisting his person on full opera performances.