Domingo first auditioned in Mexico as a baritone
José Plácido Domingo Embil, born in Madrid on 21 January 1941, grew up inside his parents' zarzuela troupe in Mexico. At a 1959 Bellas Artes audition he tried baritone repertoire—then was asked to sight-read a tenor aria that redirected a century-long career.
Spanish opera singer, conductor, and arts administrator Plácido Domingo has recorded more than a hundred complete operas and crossed into Latin and popular repertory, collecting fourteen Grammy awards among other honors. Childhood meant work in the family zarzuela company, which he later championed as Spanish lyric theatre's portable form. Conducting and administrative posts grew beside the tenor celebrity.
Parents Pepita Embil and Plácido Domingo Ferrer raised him after a Madrid Retiro-district birth; the family's Mexican years shaped language and stage instincts. In 1957, at sixteen, he accompanied his mother on piano in Mérida, Yucatán, for a first professional appearance and began serious voice study the same year. Two years later the Mexico National Opera audition flipped his fach toward tenor roles that would define the Three Tenors era.
The Bellas Artes panel took him on as a tenor comprimario and vocal tutor, and he counted the small role of Borsa in Verdi's Rigoletto as his true operatic debut. To make ends meet he played piano for a ballet company and a programme on Mexico's new cultural TV channel. His first leading role, Alfredo in La traviata at Monterrey in 1961, was followed the same year by a Dallas debut opposite Joan Sutherland in Lucia di Lammermoor. He reached the Metropolitan Opera on 28 September 1968, stepping in at short notice for Franco Corelli, and conducted his first opera, La traviata at New York City Opera, on 7 October 1973. His 1981 pop album Perhaps Love, whose title duet with John Denver sold almost four million copies, carried him well beyond opera audiences, and he later ran Los Angeles Opera from 2003 to 2019.
Source: Plácido Domingo
