Domingo plans career-spanning LA Opera concert

Spanish legend Placido Domingo will highlight the Los Angeles Opera's upcoming season with a career-spanning concert and involvement in two productions, the company announced Monday.

Domingo, who has been LA Opera's general director since 2003, will perform a concert on November 17 to mark 50 years since he first took the stage in the city's then new Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

LA Opera music director James Conlon will lead the concert that will bring in to-be-announced special guests.

Announcing its 2017-18 season, LA Opera said Domingo will also conduct a production of Bizet's "The Pearl Fishers" starring Georgian soprano Nino Machaidze and Mexican tenor Javier Camarena.

Domingo, who remains active at 76 after health scares, is one of the 20th century's most recognized tenors but in recent years has transformed himself into a baritone.

He will return to a baritone role in the upcoming season as he performs the title role of Verdi's "Nabucco," which Domingo sang recently at New York's Metropolitan Opera.

But LA Opera has also focused on less traditional works and productions through its "Off Grand" program that stages performances at sites around the city.

The upcoming season will include "Crossing," a piece by LA Opera's artist-in-residence Matthew Aucoin based on classic American poet Walt Whitman's encounters with wounded Civil War soldiers.

The main stage will feature a new production of the French version of Gluck's "Orpheus and Eurydice" directed by leading US choreographer John Neumeier.

A co-production with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Joffrey Ballet and Hamburg Ballet, "Orpheus and Eurydice" will star soprano Lisette Oropesa opposite Russian tenor Maxim Mironov.

LA Opera will also mark next year's centennial of the birth of Leonard Bernstein by staging "Candide," his English-language operetta based on Voltaire's satire.