Word: placido
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...Tenor Placido Domingo was masterly in his first Otello in New York (he has performed it 40 times elsewhere and recorded it for RCA). Dramatically, he projected a strong warrior but a vulnerable man, a noble nature whose obliviousness to evil turned all his strengths-his depth of feeling, his decisiveness, his simplicity-to fatal weaknesses. The cruelly demanding role requires Otello to sing full-out the moment he walks onstage, with the famous cry of triumph, Esultate!, and scarcely ever allows him to let up thereafter. Domingo's voice was exhilaratingly equal to it all-dark and thrusting...
With his extra measure of Ponselle's "certain something," Pavarotti occupies a unique position among the tenors of today. Placido Domingo, 38, his nearest rival, has a superbly smooth, rich voice and a wider range of roles?he sings the weighty Othello as well as bel canto parts?but he sometimes loses impact because of a veiled timbre and somewhat muted personality. Jon Vickers, 52, can match Pavarotti's intensity and puts more serious thought behind his performing, but his is an entirely different kind of voice: rugged, heroic, best suited to dramatic works such as Otello, Les Troyens...
...Rudel, the company staged early operas like Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea and such rarities as Janacek's The Mahropou-los Affair and Rimsky-Korsakov's Le Coq d 'Or. It has nurtured young singers, mostly American?including, on their way up. Sills, Sherrill Milnes, Donald Gramm and Placido Domingo. "Rudel did interesting operas and developed interesting singers," says Anthony Bliss, executive director of the Met. "It is no mean achievement...
Puccini: Madama Butterfly (Soprano Renata Scotto, Tenor Placido Domingo, Baritone Ingvar Wixell, Philharmonia Orchestra and Ambrosian Opera Chorus, Lorin Maazel conductor, Columbia; 3 LPs). Madame Butterfly is one of opera's most endearing and enduring heroines. Scotto makes a warm Butterfly; she effortlessly holds the almost whispered high notes of her Un bel di aria. Domingo's Pinkerton is such a hearty fellow that it is hard to hate...
Puccini: La Fanciulla del West (Soprano Carol Neblett, Tenor Placido Domingo, Baritone Sherrill Milnes; Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Zubin Mehta, conductor; Deutsche Grammophon; 3 LPs). Fanciulla (1910) is a second-rate Italian opera comically posing as a shoot-'em-up thriller. Neblett makes a dramatic frontier heroine. Domingo, as her lover, sings everyone else under the bar, and Milnes is dashingly villainous. With Mehta in the saddle, chorus and orchestra ride smartly home...