Plácido Domingo, conductor, steps into the pit of the Metropolitan Opera on Thursday evening for a performance of Verdi’s “Stiffelio.” Four days later Plácido Domingo, singer, steps onto the Met stage to open a run of Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra.”
Singer, conductor and company chief: Plácido Domingo in New York last week.
And so it goes. After several weeks of grueling rehearsals, Mr. Domingo alternates conducting and singing in a month of performances. Hurricane Plácido is blowing through town, a display of energy that is astonishing, yet by now routine, for a man who turns 69 on Jan. 21.
But while Mr. Domingo performs at the Met, staffs at two other important American opera companies are working away on their own, without the presence of their general director, Plácido Domingo.
Mr. Domingo has held that job at the Washington National Opera and the Los Angeles Opera since 2003, after several years as artistic director of both companies. They have long functioned without his complete attention, even as they have grown in prominence and quality under his leadership. But both companies have recently taken urgent economic measures that have downsized his ambitions. The Los Angeles Opera borrowed heavily from its donors and had to take an emergency loan from Los Angeles County, while Washington recently announced a round of layoffs. Those difficulties have stirred talk among many in the opera world that Mr. Domingo may be spread too thin.
The critics — who include leading figures in the classical music world and current and former officials at the companies who declined to be named for fear of offending such a beloved and powerful player — say it is sometimes hard to get a decision from Mr. Domingo, that his artistic ambitions have outstripped economic realities, and that both companies are struggling from the lack of a firm local hand. Under Mr. Domingo both have suffered vacuums in the key managerial position, variously termed chief executive officer or executive director.
“Domingo is perhaps the greatest living singer today,” said one official of a performing arts institution who deals with him. But as a manager and as a general director, he added, his performance is “kind of suspect.” The unhappiness among staff members has extended to board members, officials said.
The reasons so many officials declined to make critical comments on the record are understandable. Mr. Domingo is a superstar who transcends the boundaries of opera. He is also an immensely powerful force in a relatively small world. He can make and break careers, engage singers and conductors, make deals with other companies. And his performances fill houses. He is not a man impresarios want to alienate.
Eleni Kallas, a union official in Washington who spoke warmly of Mr. Domingo and supports him, said that problems with productions sometimes worsen because he is not on hand to nip them in the bud, and that he arrives at the end of rehearsals and asks for costly last-minute changes. In one instance the chorus had to be paid overtime for an acoustical check because Mr. Domingo had only one day free to fly in.
But Ms. Kallas stressed that Mr. Domingo had helped greatly to improve labor relations at the Washington opera (which went through four strikes in the early 1990s), had brought in star singers and raised money as only a superstar can. “He values his artists, from the choristers all the way up to the Maria Guleghinas and the Renée Flemings,” Ms. Kallas said.
Marc A. Scorca, the president and chief executive of Opera America, the major service organization in the field, gave Mr. Domingo credit for having helped both of his companies grow to prominence. “Perhaps the institutional growth hasn’t been paced in lock step with the artistic growth,” he said. “I have confidence both will succeed in that.”
In an interview at the Met last week between rehearsals, Mr. Domingo said, “I am not overstretched.” During his years at the houses, he added, “I’ve been working in the same way.”
“The problems we have now,” he said, “is simply the crisis.”
Mr. Domingo and his associates say they communicate just fine via e-mail, telephone and snatched conversations in mid-travel. They added that since he often performs at his houses, they have plenty of face time then.
In Los Angeles “no decision is made without Plácido,” said Deborah Borda, the president and chief executive of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and a major player in the Los Angeles classical music world.
“The direction of the company,” she added, “emanates directly from him.”