Opera singers, like footballers, always want to retire gracefully, on their own terms: “Leave ’em wanting more” is the motto. To judge from the reception Plácido Domingo gets in the title role of Verdi’s Nabucco, the fans want plenty more, even if they gave no standing ovation at the performance I saw.
Nabucco is a young man’s opera — Verdi was in his twenties when he wrote it — but Daniele Abbado’s production, relocating the action to the 20th century, rarely captures its mercurial blend of the purely generic and the startlingly original. It doesn’t help that too often when Domingo is singing he daren’t pull himself away from the prompter’s box at the front of the stage. He’s 75 now, and of course he’s not the singer he was 55 years ago, when he made his stage debut.
These days he’s a baritone, not a tenor, and if the pitch of the voice hasn’t altered drastically, it doesn’t “ping” the way it used to.
Still, his Nabucco (the biblical Nebuchadnezzar) has vocal nobility, not least when he sings lying prostrate on the stage: not many 75-year-olds would contemplate that.
The run continues but Domingo will only sing on June 23. Will that be his last London performance? I wouldn’t put it past him to return.
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