Placido Domingo: Opera filled with pain can make you feel happy

SS: So, I wanted to make this interview a lot about the music and how people feel music and especially classical music. But I thought it would be fun if we could maybe go back to where you started, because you were a part of a rock band in Mexico. Now they say every experience leads you to the one that you need. I don't know what you've got out of that experience, but maybe you can tell me, were there some insights that you got being part of a rock band, while you're one of the greatest tenors in opera now? 

PD: I don't know, you know that my parents, they were singers and they sang beautiful music which… By the way, whenever I have a concert I put the musical zarzuela. Zarzuela is the beautiful music from Spain. We have many different regions, places, and the music is different. The choreography is different. The stories are not as dramatic as the opera, because there is some drama, but nobody dies in the zarzuela. And that's what I learned. That's the first music that I heard. When my mother was expecting me she was singing. So she was singing until the ninth month. So that was the first music that I heard even before I was born. 

SS: So when I think about opera, let's say, in the time of Verdi, how was it going on in the audience? You had riots, you had booze, you had cheers, you had people, audience who are actually singing along as the opera went on stage. So I was thinking it was actually pretty much like a rock concert back then? Maybe opera people should loosen up today and bring back those traditions? What do you think? 

PD: Opera is as popular as pop music for the lovers. The lovers of opera, they feel with the same passion like the young people. Today they love all the pop music, all the rock music whatever is the time and so... I think that the opera will be… It will live forever. I think as long as we have some kind of romanticists. And we really feel it. This music... It will be loved forever. Not everybody can understand it. This is the only problem. Today it’s so easy for the pop music... You start to hear music and everybody's tam-pam!.. You see that in the Red Square, you see it in the Trafalgar Square, this music. Everybody's moving with the modern music. For us, for the opera it’s more difficult to conquer this new public. But once they hear performances - today the acting is very important, of course... In the old times the opera singers just would be in front of the stage, and they wouldn’t move. But that has been changing and in the last 50 years, which I have been singing,  the public really sees a wonderful show with music, acting, lighting, costumes like a very big thing. I defend that, and I know that everyday people will love more and more opera. 

SS: If you don't mind, I would like to go point by point through that statement you’ve just made. I'll start with you and what kind of audience you prefer to have in the hall. For instance, you've said once that you like people who listen with their heart. But what about people who are opera connoisseurs, who actually feel the nuances, and the thoughts that the composer put in that music? I mean don't you appreciate that kind of audience more? If I was a sommelier I would like to pour vintage wine to someone who knows the taste and the price of the wine and wouldn't tell me that: “Oh, I like Beaujolais Nouveau better because it tastes better”. 

PD: Both things are very important because the connoisseurs, the people that are really opera fans all their life, are great. These are people who come and are already ready to have a great evening. But it's very important to conquer the new public. So we have to find everyday more and more how to explain and how to teach the young people, because the generations, they are passed so we are getting more and more age. So also the fans. Not only the singers but the fans. But I tell you, all around the world and more than ever in every place of the world they come - phenomenal voices. And to sing opera you really need these composers, they were amazing. I mean you have, about the Russians, probably you have more composers than any other... 

SS: There are a lot of us.  

PD: Of course, I mean, opera was born in Italy. And Italy and France then, England, it’s also fantastic in Russia and in every place. But the opera is coming from all the different styles we have. Opera is 400 years old. 

SS: So for my viewers, who are not necessarily experts in opera and classical music, because I like to give them sometimes tools, what would you recommend? What is the simplest way to dig into classical music if you haven't touched it yet and you want to go deep into that? What would you recommend? Like, how to go about it? 

PD: Of course we have certain operas that everybody recognises the titles. If you talk about “La bohème”, when you talk about “The Barber of Seville”, when you talk about “Carmen”, talk about “Tosca”, about “Traviata” - those operas, it would be recommendable that if somebody wants to go for the first time to an opera to bring them to something, then it is, let's say, the best known. 

SS: So you just gave the list of the recommendable operas to start a journey to the classical music and world of the opera, and I remember that scene from “Pretty Woman”. You've seen that film? When she hears “Traviata” for the first time and she starts crying, and when Richard Gere tells her: “You either love it or hate it. And if you love it, you'll just know”. You know, there's a general understanding that classical music is something that transcends culture, transcends nationality, transcends age, and anyone who hears it, will be touched by it. So I always wondered in my head and I want to know what you think, because of course us, people with a DNA inherited with classical music, no matter whether it Russian, or Spanish, or Italian, or even American, we've had classical music in our culture. So even when we hear it for the first time, it touches us, but what if an Aboriginal from a tribe hears it for the first time?  

PD: You know, I have a competition that is called Operalia for 27 years now, and every year we have winners, and they come from all around the globe. We have soprano Pretty Yende from South Africa. And she was not living in Johannesburg. She was in a place… And one day she heard the music of a duet of “Lakmé”, and she heard that music and immediately said: “What is that?” She found out this was opera. And she came to my competition, and she won. So we have winners from all around the world. The feeling, it has to come. It’s something that exists in an individual. And of course, the voice. That's something else. You are going to be a singer. You have to have the product there and develop it. So you have to study and so on. But simply the feeling of loving music - anybody can have it. 

SS: And I want to look at the perception of music from a little more serious angle. I wonder if music is a tool that shapes the world and changes the world or is it just a tool to rest from the world's problems? What do you think? 

PD: Well, I think that music helps us in many difficult moments in our life. So I think the music today is a little more complicated. Before people would arrive home in the old days, and still when the gramophone started to play, they would go home and they would listen to music. There was no television. So it has changed today, but of course the people that learn and love it - yes - they will go home and they will listen to music, even at home. They don't need to go to the theater to listen to music, but today there’s so much with the television, with all grades of spectacles that you can go and see it, sports, everything. But in the old days people would arrive home and listen to music. 

SS: But is music for you something that is purely positive and purely good, or can you express through music for instance totalitarian ideas. I mean Wagner wasn't a very nice guy. We all knew his world views, but we still listen to his music because he was a genius. And then during Nazi Germany there was great totalitarian art, but it was totalitarian art. Do you think music can change the perception of a person both for the better or for worse? Not only good, not only soulful, but can it be as a tool or a powerful tool to express totalitarian ideas, for instance? 

PD: I think that the music that touches you... You are not going to analyse if that composer was a great human being or no. I mean the music - you love it, and you don’t have to analyse it. That music - you feel it. It's because you have the sensibility and the ability to combine with that music, maybe not with another. And maybe it could be a saint, the best person in this world, and the music doesn't touch you. So I think the music is something that the human being has as the choice, doesn’t matter who wrote it.  

SS: So all the great musicians tell me, “First there was music”. 

PD: First like in capriccio. 

SS: What do you think? What is a more powerful tool to impact human soul: word or music? 

PD: I think it’s the combination. It’s the combination, especially in the opera, because you are creating a character into any time of life. You could be a poet, you could be a revolutionary. You could be a drunkard, you could be a king. You could be an emperor. You could be… I’ve sung an opera where I was Rasputin. And so you have to create this character, but it’s not enough - the music. The people have to... The text is as important as the music. You can not separate, because that's the reason they exist - a story. Otherwise, it will be just a concert, and you will see it. But the feeling of what you and me, what we’ll be having in a duet … Singing is: you have to tell me something, and I answer you. But I answer you not speaking - singing. But singing with that text is going to be more passionate.  

SS: Powerful. 

PD: Because it helps sometimes. I tell you one thing: sometimes I have been doing a Verdi opera or any other Verdi operas, that they are from Shakespeare and come from Shakespeare. And when I read the text of Shakespeare, which is phenomenal, that the text that the librettists gave to Verdi based on Shakespeare. It's amazing. The combination of the sound, the music and the text - it creates magic. 

SS: So, generally when we think about that powerful combination of classical text and classical music that is opera, mostly we think that it's about pain and tortured soul, and something that really touches you so deeply but not necessarily a happy feeling. Opera is more about pain than happiness.  It's not like... But then I always wondered how does the pain and the torment of the soul that the authors meant translate into singing, into pain for me, the listener. For instance, when you sing Lensky, and he is not a happy guy, right? 

PD: No.  

SS: I feel so happy, why? 

PD: You feel happy? 

SS: Yes. When I listen to you when you sing Lensky, I feel so happy but I don't understand why. I'm supposed to be sad. 

PD: Because you are listening to the tragedy of this boy, [SINGS LENSKY’S ARIA] ...it's a combination. You see the sad person but because he's telling those that text with that beautiful music, you’re enjoying it very much. There’s a poor guy, he's going to die now with his friend, who’s going to kill him in five minutes. But you are enjoying it, what he's doing. 

SS: Yes, I feel very happy. When I think of you singing I get goosebumps now when you sing that aria. I know that after each performance you bend down to the stage and you sing to it - something you do every time.  

PD: Yes.  

SS: What is it? Do you really sing to the spirits of the theater, of the opera, or is it like an esoteric  ritual that opera singers have? 

PD: I just do it because I hope that I come back to that place, to that stage, to that city, and that’s the reason why I do it. I thank the God, and I say I hope that I can come back to this place.   

SS: In cinema, there is a combination of director/actor, and how much actor can be himself and how much he should translate the director's thoughts when he's acting. I always wonder what was the right balance channeling for the opera singer of what the composer meant for you to say and how much of yourself you can be while saying what the author wanted to say? 

PD: We are all different. We all have to sing the same music, but everybody will be different. Everybody will touch you in a different way. If you right now put an aria, any aria - “Donde lieta uscì” from “La Bohème”, and you put the recording of Maria Callas, and you put the recording of Renata Tebaldi, when you put Mirella Freni, when you put Montserrat Caballé, Galina Vishnevskaya and some of the fantastic new voices, when they're coming and everyone is going to be different. The music is the same, but the interpretation and the quality of every voice - it makes a different moment, a different discovery. And sometimes if you think: “Oh, that was great”, then you hear somebody else is “Oh, my God, this is amazing”. But also it's the feeling of the individual. 

SS: Like if you’re sad at that moment, or happy.  

PD: And also how much you understand, how much you know. One of the first question you ask me was “what do you prefer: the opinion of an expert that it is really an opera lover or the one that hears you for the first time?” What can I tell you? Let me see what the person that hears me for the first time tells me. I know that the connoisseur I already won. I know, because he has heard me many times, whatever… But this one now, that it was here, and after singing I’ll ask him: I’d like to know what do they feel, when they don't know about qualities. 

SS: I just have a last question for you. In classical music especially, people say that success is both talent and hard, hard work. I mean you are performing more than 60 years, one of the best performers ever. Tell me honestly: is it possible to cover up for lack of talent, no matter how much you practice? 

PD: What can I tell you, the public has taste, the public has ears. There are different levels of artist. There are some singers, they are right to a certain level or the ones they call here. That's the difference. But I think that they have something. I don't believe that we will be here singers professionally in unimportant theatre, then they don't have anything. That's impossible. They have to have something. But of course there are also singers... we all pass for some difficult moments. Maybe it was not our best year. I'd say, we have to recover. So you have some sort of sickness, you have a year better than the other. But what is important is the level. The level has to be high. But I don't think that a non-talent artist, I don't say it only about a singer. Whatever. If you don't have the talent you wouldn't make it. Sophie, you wouldn't be making this program if you weren’t talented. 

SS: Thank you so much, maestro. We wish you the best of performances here in Moscow. Come back to us soon. 

PD: I'm so so glad because I remember so much your grandfather. 

SS: And he adored you so he is very happy watching this now from up there. Thank you so much.  

PD: Thank you very much.  

SS: And we also thank ”Hotel Baltschug Kempinski Moscow” for hosting us.