Gold and Silver Gala with Placido Domingo (1996)

Placido Domingo, Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu, and a host of other operatic stars celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first performance given by the Covent Garden Opera Company in The Gold and Silver Gala. The glittering evening was also a celebration for Domingo himself – it was the Silver Jubilee of his first performance as Covent Garden on 8th December 1971. Appropriately, he crowned the occasion by conducting Franz Lehar‘s famous waltz, Gold and Silver. Ealier, he was heard in his more familiar tenor guise singing arias along with other members of the stellar company. Besides the current golden couple of Alagna and Gheorghiu, they included Russian soprano young American baritone Dwayne Croft. Among the composers represented in this feast of operatic music, familiar and unfamiliar, were Verdi, Gounod, Massenet and Charpentier. Asher Fisch conducted the orchestra of the Royal Opera, Covent Garden.