Word: domingo
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Placido Domingo triumphs in Wagner's Lohengrin...
...splendid Bulgarian soprano Anna Tomowa-Sintow as the gentle maiden Elsa, the fiery Hungarian soprano Eva Marton as the scheming Ortrud and the hearty Danish bass Aage Haugland as King Henry the Fowler. Most notable of all, as Lohengrin, the mysterious knight of the Holy Grail, it featured Placido Domingo on one of his rare forays into the German repertoire. What looked at first like a mismatch turned out to be a gamble that paid off handsomely...
Since the death of Wolfgang Windgassen in 1974, Wagnerites have bewailed the dearth of stalwart voices to tackle parts like Lohengrin, Tristan and Siegfried. Although he has said that he would some day like to sing Parsifal and perhaps Tristan, Domingo's natural territory is the lyric roles of Italian and French opera. It is too much to expect him to become a true Heldentenor: he lacks the sheer force to surge over Wagner's complex orchestral writing, his German diction is heavily Latinized, and his phrasing belongs to the Mediterranean, not the Teutonic, school...
...Domingo began slowly, pacing himself for the nearly five-hour evening. His singing in Act I was careful but not tentative; he infused Lohengrin's valedictory to his swan with the wistful Italianate warmth of a love song. In the second act, he sang passionately as Lohengrin tries to protect Elsa, his betrothed, from Ortrud's Iago-like machinations. By the third act, he was in full command, delivering the difficult Grail narration, in which Lohengrin sorrowfully reveals his identity and his obligation to leave Elsa, with power and poignancy. It may not have been idiomatic...
...most of them did with the Royal's Turandot. The casting, for instance. In the title role, veteran Soprano Gwyneth Jones still has a preternaturally loud voice, but her control over it has long since departed, and her wobbly singing is now merely painfully impressive. Tenor Placido Domingo is one of the finest of operatic actors, but even his persuasive characterization of Calaf, the unknown prince who overcomes the ice princess's sexual misanthropy, could not disguise the fact that the part lies uncomfortably high for him. In the pit, Conductor Cohn Davis, leading the opera...