Placido Domingo: My Operatic Roles.(Book Review)(Brief Article)

by Helena Matheopoulos; foreword by Beverly Sills Baskerville Publishers, 319pp. $35

This latest addition to the Domingo bibliography was a nice idea: "a portrait of the artist in his own words, through his own portrayals of the various operatic heroes ... each of whom he contains, mysteriously, within himself." The format is straightforward, a chronological traversal of the tenor's sixty-two major roles. Each gets its own chapter, and author Helena Matheopoulos, who conducted the interviews from which Domingo's role-assessments were culled, provides introductions placing the roles in the context of his career. It could have been an interesting read.

Unfortunately, the execution is a different story. Matheopoulos's effusive prose smacks of fan-magazine hype. The tone is set in the preface: "He has the charisma of a rock star, the charm of a movie star, the voice of a god ... and Superstar is written all over him." The repetitive, unfocused chapter intros mix dry statistics with personal impressions that abandon all pretense at objectivity. "It was not just a matter of the way Domingo stood, or even of his facial expressions," she writes of his Radames, "but of something he exuded, or emanated, through his whole persona." This puffy approach seems demeaning for an artist such as Domingo, whose genuine attributes could easily withstand a more sober critical evaluation.

Domingo's explorations of his roles aren't always focused, either. Some chapters ...