Placido Domingo comes to Berkeley

Placido Domingo. (Dimitri Messinis / AP)

Even though opportunities to see him perform in the Bay Area are few and far between, I was initially ambivalent about attending Placido Domingo's concert next Saturday night, September 7th, at UC Berkeley's Greek Theater because it's outdoors, amplified, and likely be a program of who-knows-what arias.  I've also seen him a few times before and know I'll probably see him again, maybe next year in L.A Opera's production of Thais, maybe this coming January when he performs at Davies Symphony Hall. But I've seen him, and that burning desire to experience an operatic legend, the finest living singer in the world, has already been satisfied a few times now (and he's always been nothing short of superb).

Last Saturday night, as Margarita and I were leaving the Greek after the Goat Rodeo Sessions, there was a guy handing out postcards promoting the concert. I took one, and asked Margarita if she'd ever heard Domingo perform before. She replied she hadn't but would love to, which led to my telling her about the first time I heard him live. Her eyes lit up as I described the tremendous power, shocking really, of hearing him as Siegmund in Die Walkure.  Up until that point I had never heard such a strong, clear voice- first it stunned me, then it thrilled me. Eventually we moved on to other topics.

Then someone sent me a copy of the program for the concert. The first half is all Wagner and Verdi, including "Winterstuerme" from Die Walkure, "O du, mein holder Abendstern" from Tannhauser, "Udiste...Mira, d'acerbe lagrime" from Il Trovatore, and "Pura siccome un angelo" from Traviata. Reading this list, I started to reconsider.

The second half is a grab bag of operetta (Lehar, Strauss), Broadway (Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Bernstein) and zarzuela. I thought about how invested Domingo is at this stage in his career in actually acting while he's singing and these selections made sense to me. Then I remembered one of the most enjoyable experiences I've ever had was attending a performance of Turandot in 1997 at an outdoor soccer stadium in Rome on a hot  August night in 1997. That pretty much did the trick. I'm in.

Performing with Domingo are sopranos Angel Blue, an Operalia finalist Domingo has described as the next Leontyne Price (I remember her solid performance in SFO's 2009 production Porgy and Bess) and Micäela Oeste, a discovery of Domingo's during his tenure with WNO. Eugene Kohn will conduct the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra. Tickets are available through Ticketmaster with no service fees, and if you enter the code SFS when you order tickets before midnight on Monday, you'll be able to save 50% off tickets in any section. 

How many more opportunities are you going to get? Not many.

The presenter is Another Planet, partnering with Cal Performances.