From an article on Playbill’s website regarding the Washington National Opera’s season plans for next season:
Later in April and May will be the Washington National Opera premiere of Tamerlano, among the greatest of Handel’s 40-odd Italian operas. Plácido Domingo will sing the pivotal role of the Ottoman emperor Bajazet, one of the greatest parts the composer ever wrote for tenor. It will be the 127th role of Domingo’s long career (he will be 67 years old by then), and the first he has sung by any Baroque composer.
a southern gal in the north 
I always insist on “not writing the review until until you’ve seen the performance,” and I’ll stand by that principle to the end. Concerning Domingo as Bajazat, I will simply observe that when he sang (beautifully) Idomeneo at the MET, he had to elect the simplified version of “Fuor del Mar” as his ability to sing the the runs and ornaments in the full version is minimal. Bajazet has a killer aria that requires tremendous virtuosity in this kind of ornamentation. I last heard it sung on stage (spectacularly) by David Daniels at Glimmerglass and will be interested to see how Domingo deals with it.
I thought Domingo sounded truly extraordinary in “The First Emperor.” His husbanding of that voice through the decades should stand as a challenge and inspiration to singers everywhere.
LikeLike
P.S. It may be his first Handel but it won’t be his first Baroque opera leading role. He sang Hyppolite in Rameau’s “Hyppolite et Aricie” here in Boston back in the 1960s. An up and coming soprano named Beverly Sills sang Phaedre in the Sarah Caldwell production.
LikeLike