Biography (read more)
Plácido Domingo (b. 1941, Madrid, José Plácido Domingo Embil) trained at Mexico’s National Conservatory of Music and made his professional debut in a leading role in Monterrey in 1961; he made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1968. Over a career spanning six decades he has sung 151 different roles across Italian, French, German, Spanish, English, and Russian repertoire, most celebrated for Otello (performed over 200 times), and has recorded more than 100 complete operas. He served as artistic and general director of Washington National Opera (1996–2011) and Los Angeles Opera (2000–2019), and as a member of The Three Tenors made the best-selling classical album of all time. In 2019 multiple colleagues accused him of sexual harassment spanning decades; an investigation commissioned by the American Guild of Musical Artists found the allegations credible, and Domingo resigned as general director of Los Angeles Opera, later apologizing in 2020 to colleagues who felt uncomfortable around him.
Originally a leading tenor and later baritone, Domingo is one of the most prolific and commercially successful opera singers in history, and founded the Operalia competition in 1993 to support emerging singers, though his legacy is now complicated by the 2019 misconduct allegations.
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