Domingo going strong at 66

NEW YORK — A makeup artist presses a pencil into the delicate skin around Placido Domingo's left eye, drawing a dark line. A woman's hand applies a touch of spirit gum to the tenor's hairline to keep an elaborate wig from slipping.

With a glance in his dressing room mirror, Domingo is ready for his latest role — that of a Chinese emperor in a world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera.

Striding out in a tortoise-like armor costume, Domingo heads for the stage again.

At 66, he's determined to keep going, maintaining a demanding schedule that still takes him around the world, outlasting the usual career span for a top tenor.

"The voice is a mystery, you know? It puzzles me why I am still singing," says Domingo, who has given more than 3,300 live performances over four decades. "The First Emperor," composed by Academy Award-winner Tan Dun, is his 124th role — more than any other opera star, as far as anyone can remember.

And at precisely the time when audiences are demanding more realistic musical theater from opera, this vocal athlete is also at his peak as an actor.

The Spaniard's age-defying stamina fuels not only his performing, but his conducting, the mentoring of young artists and very personal efforts on behalf of humanitarian causes from medical research to disaster relief (he once dug in rubble with rescuers following a Mexican earthquake that took the lives of four relatives). He's also general director of both the National Opera in Washington, D.C., and the Los Angeles Opera.

At times, he seems a man driven, diving with superhuman energy into this next act of his life.

Domingo still sings with power and his sound has a vibrant, burnished richness. But he now takes on roles that require fewer high notes.

"Some of the sheen in his voice is starting to wear away," says James Inverne, editor of the London-based classical music magazine Gramophone. And yet Domingo's performances "are magnificent in every way — he's a terrific visual actor, on stage and in film. He's got it all."

For the past decade or so, his voice has enjoyed "the most glorious Indian summer," Inverne says, "and now, he's just starting to move towards the last phase of his career. And I suspect he knows it."

People once paid just to listen to a great singer. Now, increasingly, they want to see, and even to experience, the characters in a performance.

"I cannot think of just standing and singing," Domingo says. "People want to believe what they see, it's not enough that you are a singer. I have been fanatic about all these things. I like the people to get involved in the character, I like the people to be able to suffer, or to laugh with me at what I'm doing."