Placido Domingo muses about a Philadelphia encore
Already, superstar tenor Placido Domingo is talking about a return visit to Philadelphia. His Feb. 16 gala fund-raising concert at the Kimmel Center with Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia will be his first public performance here in 26 years. But at a news conference yesterday at the Westin Hotel - between concerts in Seoul and New Orleans - Domingo casually let it drop: "If the public likes it, I can come back."
Already, superstar tenor Placido Domingo is talking about a return visit to Philadelphia.
His Feb. 16 gala fund-raising concert at the Kimmel Center with Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia will be his first public performance here in 26 years. But at a news conference yesterday at the Westin Hotel - between concerts in Seoul and New Orleans - Domingo casually let it drop: "If the public likes it, I can come back."
Few 67-year-old tenors can plan so confidently for the future. "I'm quite surprised I'm still singing," he said. "I always say I don't want to sing one more day than I should, but I don't want to sing one day less than I can."
Domingo is also a conductor, which he mentioned while praising not just Chamber Orchestra but the city's other ensembles - intimating that returning as a singer isn't his only option.
His absence here since his last appearance - a long-ago Philadelphia Orchestra concert with Joan Sutherland - is hard to account for. One might assume that he stayed away in the 1980s when Philadelphia opera was dominated by Luciano Pavarotti, his sometimes-rival tenor whose vocal competition was held here. But Domingo said that wasn't the case: "I just didn't have any offers."
A dozen years ago, he taped a TV special here about Mario Lanza, who was "my first inspiration to sing opera." Way before that, he stood in the back of the Academy of Music for a performance of
Turandot
starring Franco Corelli and Birgit Nilsson. "I couldn't get a seat; nobody knew me here," he said.
More easily explained is Domingo's presence now: He was to have sung in the Los Angeles world premiere of the new Daniel Catan opera
Il Postino
, but when that project was postponed due to financial considerations, he scheduled an unusually large number of concerts - 15, including Philadelphia's - in its place.
Despite the dismal economic climate, concert tickets for more than three-quarters of Verizon Hall's 2,400 seats have been sold, according to Chamber Orchestra officials (though only a quarter of the 400 concert/dinner combination tickets, which run as high as $1,000, are gone).
Domingo, who is also artistic director of the Los Angeles Opera and Washington National Opera, knows such problems well. While the demand for opera tickets hasn't diminished, he said, fund-raising is "tremendously difficult," he said. "I wasn't used to asking [for money]. Now I'm getting used."