Two weeks ago, we were telling you about the first opera in the Washington National Opera season. Last night, this DCist heard the second one, a gala production featuring the company’s superstar music director, renowned tenor Plácido Domingo. The fact that he is singing in all three acts of this production, in alternation with working at the conductor’s podium for the other production, I Vespri Siciliani, is remarkable for a musician of his age. As Tim Page put it in his review for the Post, “at the age of 64, Domingo continues to ‘have it all’.” Well, if not quite “all” in terms of vocal range and power, his magnetic power on the stage certainly continues to attract listeners worldwide. In fact, at intermission on the terrace of the Kennedy Center last night, we met a journalist who had travelled from Austria just to hear Domingo sing in this production. That’s a serious opera lover.

This is officially the WNO’s 50th Anniversary Season. Normally, this would have been a chance for a major opera company to make a big commission of a new opera. One of the most successful new operas in recent history, John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles, was originally commissioned for the 100th anniversary of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. However, commissions are expensive and often risky: in fact, Ghosts was not premiered until eight years after the 100th anniversary season it was intended to commemorate. Having just produced a not overwhelmingly successful new opera last season, Scott Wheeler’s Democracy, WNO may be gun shy. Whatever the reasons, the company presented this production, Trilogy, as one of the major events to celebrate its golden anniversary. It’s a sort of Frankenstein monster, single acts from three different operas stitched together to make an evening’s worth of singing. If that image doesn’t sound all that flattering, then you can tell that we were not all that excited by this before we went. In our opinion, this is the sort of gala affair appropriate for a summer lawn performance, not as an important part of an anniversary season. That being said, there is some radiant singing to be heard in this production, and it is worth your time, just to see Domingo on the stage, if for nothing else.