Placido Domingo

Plácido Domingo, an opera conductor and administrator as well as a singer, has appeared in 118 different roles – with the 119th scheduled for the spring of 2002 – more than any other tenor in the annals of music. His repertoire spans the gamut from Mozart to Verdi, from Berlioz to Puccini, from Wagner to Ginastera, from Spanish and Neapolitan melodies to contemporary pop songs, and he has preserved all of it a remarkable array of recordings, videos and films.

For Sony Classical Domingo has created a diverse catalogue of recordings, from pop crossover bestsellers to complete operas. His Sony Classical recordings include Boito's Mefistofele, Charpentier's Louise, Puccini's La fanciulla del west, Madama Butterfly, La rondine, Il trittico, and Le Villi, Verdi's Aida, Luisa Miller and Il trovatore with James Levine and the Met forces, Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur, Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore, Mascagni's Iris, Massenet's Le Cid, Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, Antonio Gomes's Il Guarany, Verdi's Requiem, as well as numerous crossover and recital discs including the best-selling video and audio recordings of live Christmas concerts in Vienna, bringing the singer together with such guest artists as José Carreras, Diana Ross, Dionne Warwick, Charles Aznavour, Sissel Kirkjebø, Michael Bolton, Helmut Lotti, Riccardo Cocciante, Sarah Brightman, Ying Huang, Patricia Kaas and Alejandro Fernández with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and Steven Mercurio.

Plácido Domingo sings in every major opera house in the world. He has opened the Metropolitan Opera season eighteen times within the last thirty-one years, more than any other singer since Caruso. He adds to that total when he returns to the Met in the fall of 2001 with an opening-night Verdi gala. At the Met in 2001-2002, Domingo will sing the title role in Mozart's Idomeneo and star in the company premiere of Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari’sSly, as well as conducting performances of Rigoletto .

Domingo has earned eight GRAMMY Awards for his recordings, which inevitably appear on the bestseller charts; at one time, seven of his albums appeared simultaneously on Billboard's top-selling charts of classical and crossover recordings. Eight of his albums have gone gold (selling over 1 million copies). He has made more than 50 videos and three theatrically released films: Zeffirelli's La traviata and Otello, and Rosi's Carmen. His telecast of Tosca, from the authentic locations in Rome, was seen by more than one billion people in 117 different countries.