This weekend was wonderful for me and for the musical groups of my institution. This dream began at the beginning of the year where agreements were made that the great Tenor Placido Domingo would sing in Venezuela in 2023, in fact there was a change of date and change of place of the concert during all these months, but I was very excited all this time, because in our environment, this man is one of the most important representatives of opera singing in the world. I remember that my girl wanted us to buy the tickets at the beginning of the year, but I told her no, I had the faith that we would be closer to the Maestro than I thought, and so it was.
To our surprise, the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra was chosen to accompany Plácido Domingo in Caracas, but they did not call us choir singers, and now I see that none of the musical arrangements had a choral part, it was only for tenor and soprano soloist. While we were at the international congress a couple of weeks ago I remember I was crazy talking to everyone I could to be allowed at least access to Plácido's rehearsal with the orchestra at our venue, and this dream came true last Friday, only it was limited. Not all the singers of my group could be in that rehearsal, but I had the honor of being one of those 25 chosen ones; it was the best thing that could have happened to me because that day he performed, we met him, we took pictures and the best of the best: He knew we were from the choir and when he sang Bésame Mucho, he asked us to sing the chorus, and he liked so much what we did, the few of us who were there, that we had the pleasure to sing again on Saturday and finally be invited for free to the concert on Sunday, where he pointed us out and we accompanied him from the seats doing the chorus to the song already mentioned.
My girl and Plácido...
Saturday was a very special day for the whole institution, since we could not fail to celebrate the Maestro's arrival in Caracas and we shared lots and lots of music. We gave him a tour of the facilities of our headquarters where different musical groups were waiting for him in each of the rooms, such as the Alma Llanera orchestra and its Venezuelan folklore instruments, the children singers, the white hands choir integrated by musicians with motor disabilities, the professional orchestras and even us, the Simon Bolivar National Choir, and we presented him the best of our repertoire. The Maestro was very excited, since he had not come to Venezuela since 2009 and the growth has been incredible, besides remembering familiar faces of that time and some moments in which my institution and he have coincided in European musical events. Here is a group photo we took the Saturday with Plácido Domingo:
Sunday arrives and with it the strongest emotion of this three-day weekend, the great concert at the imposing Poliedro de Caracas. It is the second time I sing here and it has always been for events that mark my artistic life towards the positive. This invitation from the Tenor was born because he had heard us sing on Friday and it occurred to him that it would be an excellent way to surprise the audience if we sang the chorus from the back, and so it was, people loved that moment as much as we did. But we had the joy of enjoying this living legend of lyrical singing, a man who even at 82 years old crushes me and a few baby singers hehe.
