Plácido Domingo is a world-renowned, multifaceted artist. Recognized as one of the finest and most influential singing actors in the history of opera, he is also a conductor and a major force as an opera administrator in his role as Eli and Edythe Broad General Director of Los Angeles Opera. His repertoire now encompasses 150 roles, with more than 4000 career performances.
His more than 100 recordings of complete operas, compilations of arias and duets, and crossover discs have earned him 12 Grammy Awards, including three Latin Grammys, and he has made more than 50 music videos and won two Emmy Awards. In addition to starring in three feature opera films—Carmen, La Traviata and Otello—he voiced the roles of Monte in Beverly Hills Chihuahua and Skeleton Jorge in the recent animated film The Book of Life, and also appeared as himself on Sesame Street and The Simpsons. His telecast of Tosca from the authentic settings in Rome was seen by more than one billion people in 117 countries. He subsequently took the title role in a 2010 live telecast of Rigoletto from Mantua, Italy, the city in which the opera’s story takes place. In 1990, he and his colleagues José Carreras and the late Luciano Pavarotti formed the Three Tenors, performing with enormous success all over the world and attracted millions of new fans to opera.
He has conducted more than 500 opera performances and symphonic concerts with the Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden, Vienna State Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Chicago Symphony, Vienna Philharmonic, Montréal Symphony, National Symphony, London Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Berlin Philharmonic. In 2018, he made his conducting debut at the Bayreuth Festival, leading performances of Die Walküre.
In 1993, he founded the international voice competition Operalia. He has received honorary doctorates from Oxford University and New York University for his lifelong commitment and contribution to music and the arts. He made his first stage appearances in a leading baritone role in 2009, performing the title role of Simon Boccanegra in Berlin. Since then, he has added several additional Verdi baritone roles to his repertoire, with appearances in Don Carlo, Rigoletto, I Due Foscari, La Traviata, Nabucco, Giovanna d’Arco, Il Trovatore, Macbeth, Ernani and Luisa Miller. He has also won acclaim in the baritone roles of Athanaël in Massenet’s Thaïs, the title role of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, and Zurga in Les Pêcheurs de Perles (his 150th role, as of on August 23, 2018, which he performed at the Salzburg Festival).