RUSSIA:LEGENDARY TENOR PLACIDO DOMINGO TEAMS UP WITH TWO RISING RUSSIAN OPERA SINGERS IN RARE RED SQUARE PERFORMANCE

Record ID: 392148

  • Title: RUSSIA:LEGENDARY TENOR PLACIDO DOMINGO TEAMS UP WITH TWO RISING RUSSIAN OPERA SINGERS IN RARE RED SQUARE PERFORMANCE
  • Date: 19th July 2001
  • Summary: SV DOMINGO AT PRESS CONFERENCE HALL (SOUNDBITE) (ITALIAN) PLACIDO DOMINGO: "I think that music is a natural uplifting of the soul. When you listen to music you forget your problems and when the public comes together to listen to an artist it is a type of communion. A thousand, ten thousands souls are united for the sake of music."
  • Embargoed: 3rd August 2001 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: MOSCOW, RUSSIA
  • Country: Russia
  • Topics: Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVAAFA9ZDP1PNZJ7SFMOAZ9527S
  • Story Text: Legendary tenor Placido Domingo has teamed up with two of Russia's rising opera stars in a rare Red Square performance.
    The Spanish singer was making only his third performance in Russia but grabbing centre stage as one of the summer's major cultural events.
    The unusual Red Square venue provided a picturesque backdrop with the Kremlin bells tolling before Domingo took the stage.
    Domingo sang to the Russian audience for over two hours, warming them up with opera standard and surprising them with a Russian-language ballad from the opera "Eugene Onegin."
    His choice of venue, Russia's historic gathering square and ancient market centre, reflected Domingo's past attempts to move opera outside of venues and allow classic music to compete with pop music in coming to the people's public sphere.
    Domingo added that performing in Russia was a sentimental return to the land where opera-hungry fans mobbed him during his first visit to the Soviet capital in 1974.
    Speaking in Italian, he compared the gathering in Red Square to a musical "communion."Pre-concert hype on Moscow, however, was far away from Domingo's celebrated voice as the press and critics focused mostly on the exotic concert location and the steep ticket prices which went as far as over $1,000 and were scalped at over $200 for distant seats.
    Domingo's concert highlighted two local artists, mezzo soprano Marina Domashenko and soprano Lyudmilla Petrova. Domashenko and Petrova had won top prizes at Domingo's young vocalist competitions in the United States and received the honour of performing with Domingo in their homeland.
    Domingo had called the singers "one of the greatest exports of Russia today" and the Moscow crowd seemed to be charmed by them.
    The most warmly greeted performance of the night was a trio of Domashenko, Petrova, and Domingo, backed by the Russian Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra.
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