Placido Domingo leaves the stage with his wife after the curtain call of Placido Domingo Celebration at the Royal Opera House after a special performance to celebrate his 40th anniversary with the Royal Opera in London October 27, 2011. REUTERS/Olivia Harris Last night the ROH was a place of love :-) We celebrated Placido's 40 years relationship with the House in the presence of the man himself. And yest again he sang for us and gave himself to stage and audience. I've read the papers today and i have to agree: nobody dies like Placido!
It was a night filled with flowers and memories. I cannot speak for his performances at the ROH other than last year's Simon, which was also my first time hearing Placido live, but his voice has been with me for nearly 40 years. As far back as i can think of i hear his voice. I feel really luckily to have been able to experience last night live and to have seen and heard Placido live.
The night itself got more exciting as we went along and although i was sorry to kind of go cold straight into Otello, which deserves all the concentration and emotion we can give it, i felt in the end the sequence was perfect, the end was what anyone could dream of. I will always cherish that absolutely gorgeous image of Placido Domingo pretending to be dead beautifully in the arms of Marina Poplavskaya's Amelia/Maria. Opera at it's best! Just as he has been giving us for so many years.
There are plenty more details about the individual 3 acts in the press if you would like to know more :-) I just feel i have to say one thing, Pappano brought Verdi to shimmering beauty, that was one of the most beautiful renditions of Rigoletto's last act i have ever heard :-)
I'll end this with the thoughts of the man of the day, because he has a way of putting the essence of things into words like few do. Placido from the heart, speaking to all opera-nutters out there ( via Louise Jury's arts blog in the Evening standard):
Placido Domingo sings London's praises
There is no better advocate for opera than Placido Domingo - and not just because he was one of the Three Tenors who made Puccini such a hit at Italia ’90.
Of course, there is the voice which is still special even if he is some years past collecting a bus pass. But everyone who meets him adores him, too. Staff relish telling you how he knows the doorkeepers, remembers everyone’s names, looks at family photos and has his make-up done with everyone else and not alone in his own dressing room.
And he has a knack of making something sound like a compliment when it is questionable whether it really is – but with no sense of being snide.
"I think the public in London is amazing," he told me amidst the adoring crush on stage after he had brought the Royal Opera House to its feet last night at a special gala marking the 40th anniversary of his Covent Garden debut.
"In some theatres maybe you have anything between half an hour or 40 minutes of curtain calls but in London I think they kind of respect the artists and say, ‘The artists has been doing a lot, they have to go home.’ Ten minutes in London is equivalent to half an hour or 40
minutes elsewhere."
He certainly got that last night, sharing the stage with no fewer than four younger singers who were making their Covent Garden debut.
"It’s really the future when you see these people," he said, making clear he had no doubts about the future of his artform – unless we become robots or machines.
"I believe opera is forever, as long as there is sensibility in people. We are all a little bit out of our minds because of opera. Normally the artists [are] but there are a lot of people and they are a little bit out of their mind and many of them completely out of
their mind because they love opera."
Domingo looked around the Royal Opera House stage and reminisced with John Tooley who was the general administrator when he sang there for the first time 40 years ago, long before the improvements made by the Nineties re-development.
"This stage was little but this house has always been enormous - the warmth of the public the company like a family. I always miss being at Covent Garden. It’s unbeatable," he told me. He genuinely seems to love it – and for everyone there last night, the feeling was
definitely mutual.
