'Giving Voice: a Conversation with Plácido
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 15, 2016 CONTACT: Thomas Lee, 617.495.8676, [email protected] ‘GIVING VOICE: A CONVERSATION WITH PLÁCIDO DOMINGO’ TO CELEBRATE LEGENDARY OPERA SINGER AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY Acclaimed tenor will discuss his life, career, and advocacy for Hispanic/Latino arts and culture on April 14 at Sanders Theatre, open to the public admission free (Cambridge, MA)—One of the finest musical artists of all time, the legendary Plácido Domingo will be celebrated at Harvard University with “Giving Voice: A Conversation with Plácido Domingo” on Thursday, April 14, 2016 at 4 pm at Sanders Theatre, 45 Quincy St., Cambridge. Moderated by Tamar Herzog, Professor of Latin American Affairs and of History, and Anne Shreffler, Professor of Music, the discussion, augmented by video clips, will focus on Maestro Domingo’s extraordinary performances in opera houses and concert stages worldwide; his directorship of the Los Angeles Opera and his career as a revered operatic conductor; his support of emerging singers and artists; his tireless advocacy for Hispanic and Latino arts and culture; and the wide range of humanitarian causes he has supported through many benefit concerts. Presented by the Division of Arts and Humanities, Office for the Arts at Harvard, and Instituto Cervantes Observatory of the Spanish Language in the United States, “Giving Voice: A Conversation with Plácido Domingo” is open to the public. Admission is free but tickets are required, with a limit of two tickets per person. Tickets are available to students (of any college) and Harvard affiliates beginning Tuesday, April 5, and to the general public beginning Wednesday, April 6, through the Harvard Box Office at Farkas Hall, 10-12 Holyoke St., 617.496.2222. As of April 6, tickets are also available online at boxoffice.harvard.edu (handling fees apply for online and phone orders). PLEASE NOTE: This event was originally scheduled for October 22, 2015. Tickets for April 14 must be obtained through the Harvard Box Office, as October 22 tickets will not be honored. Plácido Domingo is a world-renowned, multifaceted artist, recognized not only as one of the finest and most influential singing-actors in the history of opera but also as a respected conductor. And as General Director of Los Angeles Opera he is a major force as an opera administrator. He turned 74 in January of this year, but his gifts and energy remain undiminished. Domingo’s vocal repertoire encompasses 147 stage roles—a number unmatched by any other celebrated singer in opera history. The list includes not only tenor roles but also the principal baritone roles in Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, Rigoletto, I Due Foscari, La Traviata, Nabucco, Macbeth, Giovanna d’Arco, Il Trovatore and Ernani as well as that of Massenet’s Thaïs, which he has added during the last few years His more than 100 recordings of complete operas, compilations of arias and duets, and crossover discs include Deutsche Grammophon’s anthology of the complete Verdi arias for tenor and another of various baritone arias by the same composer. For EMI, he has recorded albums of Wagnerian roles that he has not sung on stage: Siegfried in both Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, and Tristan in a complete recording of Tristan und Isolde. His extensive work in the recording studio has earned him 11 Grammy Awards and three Latin Grammy Awards, and he has won Emmy awards for the television film “Homage to Seville” and for the Met’s “Silver Gala” program. He was the Latin Recording Academy’s Person of the Year in 2010. Domingo has also made more than 50 music videos in addition to four feature films of operas: Carmen, La Traviata, Otello and Tosca, in addition to a Rigoletto shot in and broadcast from Mantua, where the opera takes place. He has conducted multiple opera performances with the Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden, the Vienna State Opera, and Los Angeles Opera, among many other ensembles, and symphonic concerts with the Chicago Symphony, National Symphony, London Symphony, Berlin Philharmonic, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, and numerous other orchestras. In 1990, Domingo and his colleagues José Carreras and the late Luciano Pavarotti spontaneously formed the Three Tenors, which performed from time to time and with enormous success all over the world and attracted many new fans to opera. Born in Madrid in 1941 to parents who were zarzuela performers, Plácido Domingo was brought to Mexico at the age of eight. He attended Mexico City’s Conservatory of Music, where he initially studied piano and conducting, but when his vocal talent was discovered he began to take voice lessons as well. At 18, he made his debut in a small role (Borsa in Rigoletto) at Mexico’s National Opera; his first performance as a leading tenor (Alfredo in La Traviata) took place in the city of Monterrey when he was twenty. After having spent three seasons with the Israel National Opera in Tel Aviv, where he sang 280 performances of 12 different roles, he launched his major international career in 1965, and since then he has performed at all of the world’s most prestigious opera houses. In 1993, Domingo founded Operalia, an annual international voice competition, which has helped to start the careers of many singers who have since become major figures on the world’s stages. Domingo was also the prime mover behind Washington National Opera’s Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist program and Los Angeles Opera’s Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist program, both of which are designed to nurture and support the careers of opera’s future standard-bearers. Domingo is also Artistic Advisor to the Youth Orchestra of the Americas. In his native Spain, Plácido Domingo has been awarded the Gran Cruz de la Orden de Isabel la Católica, the Medalla de la Orden de las Artes y las Letras de España, and the Premio Prinicipe de Asturias de las Artes; and in Mexico, where he grew up, he received the Aguila Azteca. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the United States and the titles of Commander of the Legion of Honor in France, Honorary Knight of the British Empire, and both Grande Ufficiale and Cavaliere di Gran Croce of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. He has received honorary doctorates from Harvard University and New York University for his lifelong commitment and contribution to music and the arts. In October 2009, King Carl Gustaf of Sweden presented him with the first Birgit Nilsson Prize (at one million dollars, the most generous prize in the world of classical music) for his outstanding achievements in opera; in accepting the award, Domingo said that it would “greatly benefit my annual competition, Operalia.” On November 21, 2012 he was appointed as UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, in recognition of his "exceptional artistic career, his inestimable support for young opera musicians through the Operalia competition, and his dedication to the values and ideals of UNESCO.” He has raised millions of dollars through benefit concerts to aid the victims of Mexico’s devastating 1985 earthquake, of the floods caused by Hurricane Paulina in Guerrero and Yucatán, also in Mexico and in El Salvador, and of the victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, where, in 2009, the stage of the Mahalia Jackson Theatre for the Performing Arts was named for him. In 2006, he conducted Verdi’s Requiem Mass in Warsaw, to commemorate the first anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s passing. In 2011, Domingo celebrated not only his 70th birthday but also his 50th anniversary as a singer of leading roles and the 40th anniversary of his Covent Garden debut. But there are no signs of slowing down: In 2014 he gave almost ninety performances, between singing and conducting, in Vienna, Sofia, New York, Valencia, Berlin, Beijing, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Verona, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago de Chile, Salzburg, and Milano. Although he resigned as General Director of Washington National Opera at the end of the 2010-2011 season after 15 years in that position, he still continues as General Director of Los Angeles Opera. Newsweek and other international publications have fittingly described Plácido Domingo as “the King of Opera,” “a true renaissance man in music,” and “the greatest operatic artist of modern times.” Tamar Herzog (moderator) is the Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs and Professor of Spanish and Portuguese History at Harvard and an Affiliated faculty member of Harvard Law School. A legal scholar and historian by training, her work centers on the relationship between Spain, Portugal, Portuguese and Spanish America and the ways by which Iberian societies changed as a result of their involvement in a colonial project. After earning her International Baccalaureate at Lester B. Pearson College, a United World College in Victoria, B.C., Canada, Herzog obtained a Degree in Law from Hebrew University, Jerusalem; an MA in the Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies, also at Hebrew University; a DEA (Diplôme d'Etudes Approfondies) in the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris; and a PhD in History, also at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Anne Shreffler (moderator) is the James Edward Ditson Professor of Music, a Graduate Advisor in Historical Musicology, and Affiliate of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. Her research interests include contemporary opera, the musical avant-garde after 1945 in Europe and America, historiography, composers in emigration, and performance theory. After receiving a B.Mus. in flute performance in 1979 from New England Conservatory, Shreffler earned a Master’s in music theory from the same institution. She then studied musicology at Harvard, where she earned her PhD in 1989.