Badge Tom Service on Classical Blog

Does Plácido Domingo really need the $1m Nilsson prize?

Surely the money should be used to help promising young careers rather than shore up the bank accounts of already loaded divas and maestros?
Placido Domingo performs in the opera The First Emperor at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York
The top level of classical achievers ... Domingo in The First Emperor at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York in 2006. Photograph: Keith Bedford/Reuters

News of classical music's most valuable prize – and not an Oscar in sight: Plácido Domingo has won the first-ever Birgit Nilsson prize, worth $1m (£693,500). It's a choice that shocks no one: if you had to choose a name from among the stellar echelons of classical music, Domingo would be up there. But it turns out that his name was already a foregone conclusion since Nilsson chose Plácido as the first winner before her death in 2005, possibly even as long as a decade ago. There's no doubting Domingo's achievements as the greatest singing actor of his generation: anyone who has had the privilege of seeing him in the flesh will tell you that though his voice may not be quite what it was, dramatically and emotionally, there's still no one who can touch him.

But is Domingo really a worthy winner? If anybody in classical music could do without a million-dollar windfall, it's him. Now that he's relaunched himself as a successful conductor and impresario (he is general director of both the Washington National Opera and Los Angeles Opera), and can charge what he likes for vocal appearances around the world, Domingo is precisely the sort of singer who least needs the imprimatur of the Nilsson prize.

It's an odd setup for an award: the Birgit Nilsson website says that the prize will be given every two or three years either to a singer, a conductor or an operatic production (whose main criterion, worryingly, is that it should be "staged in the spirit of the composer" – are they going to ask Mozart or Wagner?). But if this is the sort of prize that's going to go to the top level of classical music achievers, then why have any cash attached to it? There are already respectable, cheque-free lifetime achievement awards (most notably, the Royal Philharmonic Society's Gold Medal), so do we need the Nilsson award at all? It would be much better if Nilsson's money were given to help young, promising careers in the opera house or on the podium than shore up the bank accounts of already loaded divas and maestros.

Having said that, there's recent news from the LA Opera that the credit crunch has hit them hard on the west coast and that plans for Domingo's Ring Cycle, which opened with its first Das Rheingold on Saturday, are in jeopardy – $32m (£22m) worth of jeopardy, to be precise. At least Domingo will be able to help out with a million of that deficit when he picks up his Nilsson cheque in Stockholm later this year.

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