Pasion Española

Plácido Domingo, Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid, Miguel Roa

Released on 01/01/2008 by Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
Main artists: Plácido Domingo Orquesta De La Comunidad De Madrid Miguel Roa
Genre: Classical

Available in

16-Bit/44.1 kHz Stereo

Unlimited Streaming

Listen to this album in high quality now on our apps

Start my trial period and start listening to this album

Enjoy this album on Qobuz apps with your subscription

Digital Download

Purchase and download this album in a wide variety of formats depending on your needs.

Here's an ideal application of Plácido Domingo's talents during what are surely the last years of his career. The songs on Pasión Española are not of operatic dimension. His voice has lost power, surely, but not control, and a listener unfamiliar with Domingo would not have guessed the singer was 66 years old when this recording was made in 2007. The copla is a Spanish popular song genre, with most of the selections heard here dating from between the 1930s and the 1950s. It was originally known as the copla andaluz, being, like flamenco music, associated with the gypsy-influenced music of the Andalucía region. Hear the flamenco-like melodic patterns in Manuel López-Quiroga y Miquel's Me embrujaste (You Bewitched Me, track 7) or the gorgeous Ojos verdes (Green Eyes, track 12) for examples of the regional flavor. But just as flamenco is now, at least outside Spain, thought of as Spanish rather than specifically Andalusian, so the copla, as the concise but informative booklet explains, became popular in Madrid and mixed with other urban forms. The songs are colloquial in language, not so much quasi-dramatic as simply passionate and tending to reveal background as they go along. They are invariably about romances, mostly of the bitter kind; the country music fan who knows the image of the girl who's just like money -- she goes from hand to hand -- will be pleased to find it as well in Juan Mostazo Morales' Falsa moneda (Counterfeit Coin, track 1). An intriguing and perhaps characteristically Spanish aspect of the lyrics is the prominence of religious and ethnic imagery onto which the doomed romances are staged: hear Manuel Font de Anta's La Cruz de Mayo (The Cross of May, track 2), or López-Quiroga's ¡Ay, Maricruz! (track 6), where that dazzling girl is depicted as "the prettiest girl in the district of Santa Cruz/The old Jewish Quarter of flowering roses has bathed her in roses of light." The program is promoted as a sentimental return for Domingo to the music of his youth. Notwithstanding that several other releases of popular and semi-popular music have been billed the same way, Domingo does a nice job with these songs, getting but not mugging his way through their over-the-top aspect. The natural accompaniment for these songs would have been guitar or piano, but a small nightclub orchestra was certainly not be out of the question, and the Orquesta del la Comunidad de Madrid under Miguel Roa effectively simulates one. The recording location, Madrid's Teatro Albéniz, also heightens the atmosphere. This is a set of small pleasures from what will come to be regarded as late Domingo.

© TiVo

More info

Pasion Española

Plácido Domingo

You are currently listening to samples.

Listen to over 100 million songs with an unlimited streaming plan.

Listen to this playlist and more than 100 million songs with our unlimited streaming plans.

From 12.49€/month

Falsa moneda - Orchestrated By Emilio Aragón

Plácido Domingo

00:03:57

José Maria Gallardo del Rey, Guitar, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Placido Domingo, Tenor, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Emilio Aragon, Remixer, StudioPersonnel - Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid, Orchestra, MainArtist - Juan Mostazo Morales, Composer - Sid McLauchlan, Producer, Recording Producer - Miguel Roa, Conductor, MainArtist - Ramón Perelló Rodenas, Author - Wolf-Dieter Karwatky, Asst. Recording Engineer, StudioPersonnel - Sixto Cantabrana Ruiz Aguirre, Author - Stephan Flock, Recording Engineer, StudioPersonnel - Ute Fesquet, Producer - Valentina Granados Simon, Producer