The Two Tenors and a Baritone lacks the easy and familiar ring of the Three Tenors, but the operatic world had better get used to the new line-up: Placido Domingo has decided to make the jump from the tenor repertoire, which he has sung around the world to acclaim for more than 40 years, to become a baritone.
A spokesperson for the artist confirmed in New York on Tuesday that Domingo will make his new career move in 2009 by taking on one of Verdi’s most demanding baritone roles, as the Doge of Genoa, Simon Boccanegra, in the opera of the same name.
Domingo will be 68 when he steps on to the stage at Berlin’s Staatsoper in 2009 to reveal his new voice. But audiences at La Scala, Milan, and at London’s Covent Garden will quickly get a chance to hear the deeper Domingo too. Britain’s Opera magazine confirmed this week that he will sing Boccanegra in London in the 2009/10 season.
It is only 10 years since Domingo appeared at Covent Garden singing the tenor role in the same opera, Gabriele Adorno — who marries Boccanegra’s daughter and succeeds him as Doge. But the possibility of a switch in repertoire has been signalled for longer than that. As the years have passed, the Spaniard’s copper-toned tenor has become ever more dark in timbre, a quality that gave his renowned interpretations of Verdi’s Otello and Wagner’s Parsifal uniquely noble authority.
Domingo has hinted in interviews in recent years that he was contemplating a switch into the baritone repertoire as a final career move.
Even so, the decision to sing Boccanegra, a relatively deep-lying Verdi role to which bass-baritones occasionally move up, is an audacious gamble, inviting comparisons with Verdian master-baritones like Tito Gobbi, Piero Cappuccilli and Domingo’s old recording partner Sherrill Milnes.
Strictly speaking, Domingo is finishing where he started. In his first operatic role, in Mexico City in 1957, he sang a baritone part in Gigantes y Cabezudos by the Spanish composer Manuel Fernández Caballero. It was not until 1960 that he sang on stage as a tenor, as Alfredo in La Traviata in Monterrey.
Fellow singers reacted with incredulity to the news on Wednesday. ”You’re joking, aren’t you?” responded one renowned opera star, who wished to remain anonymous. ”Oh no, you’re not, are you?” he continued. At Domingo’s age few singers sound at their most persuasive. But the move would not do any damage to the voice. ”If he can reach the notes, there will no problem and no harm done.”
The move is only the latest of Domingo’s many career moves. No tenor of his generation has commanded a wider repertoire or been more ambitious to stretch it further. His roles stretch from the lyric Italian tenor parts of Donizetti and Verdi to Wagnerian roles requiring immense stamina. While his contemporary Luciano Pavarotti has rarely strayed from the Italian bel canto roles in which he began his career, Domingo has consistently followed Wagner’s advice to always try something new.
Changing voices
Voices are notoriously tricky things. They change with age, time and training, and a shift in type or register, whether upwards or downwards, is not uncommon in the operatic world. Placido Domingo’s decision to tackle Boccanegra, is in many respects, a logical progression in his career.
The Chilean Ramón Vinay began his operatic career as a baritone then moved on to tackle roles in the tenor repertory before reverting to his original voice type. Among divas, Christa Ludwig, Grace Bumbry and Shirley Verrett all switched from mezzo to soprano and back again.
Many great sopranos, most notably Leonie Rysanek, have been able to extend and develop their careers by moving to the mezzo repertory. The vocal amplitude and range required for Wagner has also meant that interpreters of his soprano repertoire, such as Martha Mödl were comfortable with mezzo roles away from his music. – Guardian Unlimited Â