Opera: Simon Boccanegra

Metropolitan Opera

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Plácido Domingo isn’t one to rest on his laurels, said Martin Bernheimer in the Financial Times. At 69, the legendary tenor has made his Metropolitan Opera debut as a baritone, playing Verdi’s fading doge of Genoa. Domingo “never really was a pirate of the high C’s,” and with age, he’s taken to “adopting downward transpositions” of tenor roles that keep him squarely within the comfort zone of his lower register. But is he really a baritone? On opening night, Domingo left no doubt that he “commands all the required notes,” and also remains a performer of “ample stamina and amazing freshness.” Yet his timbre “remains stubbornly tenoral,” which sometimes makes it seem as if he’s merely “impersonating a baritone” here, albeit bravely.

Purists will complain that his voice doesn’t have the richness of a traditional Verdi baritone, said Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times. Still, opening night marked some of Domingo’s “freshest singing in years.” Despite a certain weariness to his voice, and a tendency to “fortify his sound with chesty, sometimes leathery power” when required to dip into the lower register, Domingo has a “vocal charisma, dramatic dignity, and a lifetime of experience” unmatched by any natural baritone performing these days. The last time he performed in Simon Boccanegra, in 1995, he sang the tenor role of Gabriele. I doubt he could have imagined that, 15 years later, he’d be earning enormous—and well-deserved—ovations in the title role.

This is clearly a “special moment” in the Met’s history, said Ronald Blum in the Associated Press. Domingo’s star power, fortified by bravura performances from the other cast members and passionate

conducting by James Levine, has brought a charge to Simon Boccanegra that’s lacking on most nights at the Met. With “gleaming notes,” soprano Adrianne Pieczonka wins the audience over as the doge’s long-lost daughter, Amelia. Bass James Morris proves an able Fiesco, while Patrick Carfizzi and Richard Bernstein, as courtiers Paolo and Pietro, each summon “the Verdian timbre Domingo can’t quite muster.” This Simon Boccanegra nevertheless belongs to Domingo, who has certainly proved he “can give a superior performance in whatever role he chooses.”