The NCPA (National Centre for the Performing Arts) opera Thaïs will premiere on February 2^nd-6^th. Plácido Domingo, starring Athanaёl, arrived in Beijing before dawn on January 27^th. In spite of weariness, the maestro, in his seventies, made his way to the NCPA in the afternoon and joined the rehearsal. On January 29^th, the NCPA held a press conference to announce his arrival, at which Domingo talked to reporters about how he understood the opera Thaïs and how he felt about performing it in the NCPA production.

Thaïs, a classic opera by French composer Massenet, was one of the most popular operas, but it was later gradually left “out in the cold” in the middle 20^th century. In the past few years, the opera has revived with maestro Domingo, Renée Fleming and other singers performing it, in many well-known opera houses. In 2008, Thaïs was performed for a second time in the Metropolitan Opera, where it was staged for the first time since 32 years ago, and Domingo, who was not a baritone yet at that time, expressed his partiality for the opera and felt much pity not to get involved in the production since the leading actor must be a baritone. In 2014, Domingo, who was already a baritone by then, played Athanaёl in Thaïs in the Los Angeles Opera, making this operatic role the 139^th one in his stage list. Later, he joined the production of Thaïs at the Salzburger Festspiele and Liceu Theatre, Barcelona.

Maestro Domingo answers the questions from his fans

At the end of the press conference, maestro Domingo answered the questions raised by his fans from the Facebook account of the NCPA. Talking about the most challenging part of Athanaël, the maestro said,"Of course the part of Athanaël is very challenging. It’s very long, as I said before. Very subtle of course to both for Thaïs and for Athanaël. It is once they meet in a kind of a continuous, continuous duet. This one is a great challenge. This is what I thought."

When answering whether he would shave during holidays, the maestro gave his answers,"I shave my beard very very rarely. Actually before the holidays, I shaved it. Because I always sung with beard, I relaxed some days. But since then, I was growing it by for Athanaël, because I guess those days in the desert, it was very difficult to shave. So yes I did that also with beard. "

Photos by LING Feng & XIAO Yi