Link: Guardian Unlimited | Arts features | ‘I must live up to what people expect’.

On
stage he is the embodiment of operatic passion and fire. In real life
Placido Domingo is the gentlest of men and driven by his art – to the
world’s greatest tenor, mañana is just another working day

I
have the big passion,’ said Plácido Domingo. He beamed and spread his
arms to enfold a global contingent of fans. In his endearingly
unidiomatic English, he was declaring his passion for singing. ‘It is
for me still like the beginning of my career.’

And take a look at the opening weeks’ schedules of this year’s PROMS

A bit of history of the Proms from the BBC Proms website

The first Proms concert took place
on 10 August 1895 and was the brainchild of the impresario Robert
Newman, manager of the newly built Queen’s Hall in London.

While Newman had previously organised symphony orchestra concerts at
the hall, his aim was to reach a wider audience by offering more
popular programmes, adopting a less formal promenade arrangement, and
keeping ticket prices low.
Born in 1869, Henry Wood had undergone a thorough musical training and,
from his teens, began to make a name for himself as an organist,
accompanist, vocal coach and conductor of choirs, orchestras and
amateur opera companies.

Newman
arranged to meet Wood at Queen’s Hall one spring morning in 1894 to
talk about the project. ‘I am going to run nightly concerts to train
the public in easy stages,’ he explained. ‘Popular at first, gradually
raising the standard until I have created a public for classical and
modern music.’ In February 1895 Newman offered Wood conductorship of a
permanent orchestra at Queen’s Hall, and of the first Proms season.
The series was known as ‘Mr Robert
Newman’s Promenade Concerts’ and the programmes were perhaps
over-generous by today standards, lasting around three hours. The
informal atmosphere was encouraged by cheap tickets – one shilling (5p)
for a single concert, or a guinea (£1.05) for a season ticket.

Eating,
drinking and smoking were permissable (though patrons were asked to
refrain from striking matches during the vocal numbers). The more
‘serious’ items were confined to the first half, and a major attraction
of the shorter second half was the Grand Fantasia – choice morsels
extracted from popular operas.

The Guardian’s Top Ten Picks for this year’s PROMS