Search - Plácido Domingo :: Vienna: City of My Dreams

Placido Domingo can do no wrong. He sheds the glory of his voice over whatever he undertakes, whether it's grand opera or more popular fare, and makes its style and idiom his own with total dedication. Here we find him in a London studio in 1985, with an English orchestra and chorus under a Viennese conductor, bringing back the Golden Age of the Vienna operetta, covering composers from Johann Strauss II, b. 1825, to Oscar Straus, d. 1954. Anyone with memories of that time and place, beware! Your heart will melt with nostalgia as this Spanish-born, Mexican-raised tenor sings of his love and longing for the "city of his dreams" and its beautiful girls. Only in the famous title song (which is not part of an operetta) does this combination seem a bit incongruous, especially since Domingo's German, not to mention his Viennese, hardly sounds native. However, you don't have to be Viennese to succumb to the music and the singing. The program includes several familiar favorites, notably three arias by Lehár (much the best composer after Strauss), two by Emmerich Kálmán, a Hungarian adept at writing in gypsy style, a lovely one each by Oscar Straus and Johann Strauss, and two by the lesser-known Leo Fall. Most of the songs are about love, genuine, frivolous, yearning or frustrated, and it is testimony to Domingo's artistry that he does not condescend even to the most banal; indeed he sings the more serious ones with all the passion of a Radames. Only when the irony is inherent in the song itself does he allow a smile to steal into his voice. The anonymous orchestrations seem more at home in Hollywood than in Vienna, but the orchestra plays beautifully. --Edith Eisler