Plácido Domingo (which means “Peaceful Sunday” in Spanish) was born in Madrid, Spain in 1941. Days before his ninth birthday, he went to Mexico with his younger sister to joins his parents who had gone to Mexico the year before on tour. Domingo’s mother was a prominent zarzuela (a type of Spanish light opera) soprano and his father was a zarzuela baritone (high-baritone) who once considered becoming a Wagnerian heldentenor. The Domingos liked Mexico so much that they decided to stay and run a zarzuela company there. Domingo spent his younger years immersed in his parents company and music. When he got older, he studied music at the National Conservatory in Mexico City. He studied piano and conducting, but not singing (although he did unofficially sit in on some singing classes at the Conservatory). Domingo started his singing career as a teenager in baritone parts in zarzuelas and operettas, but he made his operatic stage debut as a tenor in 1959 as Alfredo in La Traviata in Monterrey, Mexico. He continued to sing in Mexico and the United States, including as Edgardo in Lily Pons last performance of Lucia di Lammermoor. In 1962 he joined the Israeli National Opera, which as a great learning ground for the novice singer.

As a teenager, Domingo had married and had a son, José (called Pepe as a child), but the marriage had quickly ended in failure. Later, he married a soprano, Marta Orñelas, who also joined the Israeli National Opera with him. She quit her operatic career after the birth of their first son. They had two sons.

Domingo first performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York at last minute’s notice in 1965. He made his debut at La Scala in 1969 and at Covent Garden in 1971. Domingo is famed for his busy schedule and the diversity of the many roles that he has performed. His most prominent role is that of Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello, one of the most difficult roles written for a tenor and one that he made his own for well over two decades. He is also particularly well-known for French roles in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Gounod’s Faust, and Bizet’s Carmen; Italian roles in Puccini’s Tosca and Verdi’s Don Carlo; German roles in Wagner’s Die Walküre, Parsifal, and Lohengrin; and a Russian role in Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame. He has also performed operas in English (Menotti’s Goya) and Spanish (Ginastera’s Don Rodrigo). For the past couple decades, Domingo has made a second career of conducting. He also been appointed artistic director of two opera companies, first the Washington Opera and later the Los Angeles Opera. In 2000 he received Kennedy Center Honors. Domingo is a member of the popular Three Tenors with Luciano Pavarotti and José Carreras.