Being an opera lover in Los Angeles is a lot like being a Red Sox fan. As hard as they try we never make it to the World Series, let alone the playoffs. The Chandler family who owned the LA Times, and in particular Dorothy “Buffie” Chandler who raised the money to build the Music Center downtown, and put her name on its biggest theater there in a stunning display of humility, weren’t opera fans. They loved the LA Philharmonic and, of course, we had to have a suitable holy shrine for the Oscar ceremony because this is an industry town. The New York City Opera would visit in the summers from ‘66 to ‘82 but the Chandlers, and Buffie in particular, actually discouraged an opera company. We had to essentially wait for her to slip into senility before someone could start one. That finally happened in 1986 when Peter Hemmings and Placido Domingo started the LA Opera and things began to change. Very gradually. Read more »
So Placido Domingo was 
“Sony Classical is proud to announce the signing of an exclusive recording contract with Plácido Domingo. This new agreement brings the legendary singer back to the company where his unparalleled recording career started in the late 1960s. Sony Classical’s catalog boasts many of his milestone recordings, and the renewed collaboration between Mr. Domingo and the label promises to explore new repertoire areas and showcase fascinating new aspects of this great artist.” [via Slipped Disc]
La Cieca is not sure if this is a casting announcement or the result of a particularly silly round of Mad Libs: Plácido Domingo will add yet another notch to his repertoire, the title role of Der Fliegende Holländer, in a production at the Arena di Verona in the summer of 2013, with Daniel Barenboim conducting. [L'arena]
Sadly reduced to penury by music fans illegally downloading his music, the once-mighty Placido Domingo has resorted to whoring himself out to a recording industry organization whose noble purpose is to assure that sleazy A&R people continue to afford top-quality cocaine and hookers hard-working artists will receive just compensation for their work. Well, the legendary tenor has to keep busy after all, and apparently in the middle of worldwide recesssion nobody seems to think it’s a good idea to give him another opera company to run into the ground. [Bloomberg]
“With a career spanning half a century, Placido Domingo continues to be firmly against leaving the stage, where presently he is triumphing in his role as Oreste in the production of Iphigenie en Tauride that is being performed at New York’s Metropolitan Opera.” [Fox News]
“At a time of life when most opera singers can barely remember their glory days, 70-year-old Placido Domingo is still giving performances singers half his age could be proud of.” Our Own JJ‘s latest review is a love letter to the Met’s revival of Iphigénie en Tauride. [New York Post]
It was while attending a performance of Fédora in Naples in 1885 that eighteen year-old Umberto Giordano fell in love with Sardou’s then immensely popular play; the protagonist was none other than Sarah Bernhardt, the creator of the title role. He immediately asked the French dramatist to sell him the rights, a request Sardou did not even take into consideration. After the composer scored modest successes with Marina, Mala vita and Regina Diaz, Sardou seemed almost persuaded to relent, although the publisher Sonzogno considered the author’s financial demands too excessive. Only after the triumph of Andrea Chénier did Sardou and [...]
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