Senor Domingo, 63, has sung 119 operatic parts throughout his sparkling career. This time, he was singing in the original. He had learned Russian for the occasion and, as he said to newsmen, the tuneful language enchants him.
Another of the world's music superstars-cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, Galina Vishnevskaya's husband-was on the opera house audience. The day before, he opened a music programme of the Barcelona 2004 world cultural forum by conducting Benjamin Britten's A War Requiem.
He told newsmen a grotesque story from Soviet totalitarian years. A War Requiem was played at Coventry Cathedral re-consecration in 1963. Razed to the ground in a WWII nazi air raid, Britain rebuilt the cathedral from scratch. The composer asked Galina Vishnevskaya to sing the requiem soprano solos. She was in London at the time to appear in the Covent Garden's Aida. Ekaterina Furtseva, then USSR Culture Minister, banned the renowned singer to appear in Coventry as the cathedral had been "rebuilt on the revenge-seeking West German government's money".
