Placido Domingo is a rare phenomenon. The man is still going strong, taking on new repertoire with a voice that belies his age, even as he approaches his 50th year of performing on stage. He runs opera companies, conducts, and sings more leading operatic roles in more languages than any tenor extant, perhaps ever. Compiling a “very best” of his recordings is a daunting task–but EMI doesn’t appear to have even tried to do anything more than collect a sampling of his astonishingly wide output, without regard to the quality implied in “the very best”. Nor do the compilers lead from strength. The first five tracks of Disc 1 simply demonstrate that the Domingo of the 1990s was no Mozart-Handel tenor: he lacks the flexible lyric voice required for “Il mio tesoro” and “Un aura amorosa”, and he’s most assuredly not a Don Giovanni(!), as proved by the ill-advised, least-seductive “La ci darem la mano” ever recorded. But while Domingo never will be anyone’s favorite Heldentenor and he’ll certainly never do Tristan or Siegfried on stage, his recent recordings of Wagner scenes are more than acceptable. Here we get a piece of the Tristan und Isolde Act 2 love duet with a radiant Deborah Voigt, and a downright thrilling Forging Song from Siegfried.
The strongest examples of Domingo’s art come from the Italian repertoire, especially Puccini and Verdi, which together account for almost a half-hour’s worth of arias, mostly drawn from the tenor’s prime in the 1970s. Of these, the arias from his complete Aida and Un Ballo with Muti and the Giulini Don Carlo are indeed worthy of inclusion among his “very best”. But these selections just make you wonder why EMI, in a break from most of the companion releases in “The Very Best Of …” series, includes live performances from the late 1980s and 1990s that fall well beneath Domingo’s best recordings of the same works, such as Otello’s “Niun me tema” and the Meyerbeer “O paradiso”, among others. There’s a Viennese operetta set that, while creditable, never will displace affections for Tauber or Wunderlich in this repertoire. The voice is too thick, the rhythmic lilt just slightly off-center. But balancing that is an ardently sung Spanish zarzuela and song set from the same decade that’s fully idiomatic and enjoyable, further testimony to Domingo’s versatility.
Versatility does have its drawbacks, however: despite being a dominant tenor idol for several decades, not one aria or stage role, with the possible exception of Otello, is so closely associated with Domingo that his name comes to mind immediately, the way for example Donizetti’s high-C-strewn “Ah! mes amis” is linked to Pavarotti. That may be because Domingo’s generalized interpretations too often lack the insights to impress themselves upon our minds, and because the voice, handsome and full of individuality as it is, doesn’t quite burn itself into our souls. That should not detract from his remarkable accomplishments, which deserve a more discerning tribute than EMI gives us here.
