Placido Domingo

Plácido Domingo , the world's greatest living tenor, has bestowed his admiration on Lady Gaga, arguably the world's biggest pop star. In an interview that recently ran in the British tabloid the Daily Mail, Domingo said he believes "Lady Gaga has a very good voice. Absolutely. She has a wonderful voice. " He added: "I know she's very wild in her performance, and clever, and she does all these things to please the youth. But when you listen to her, the voice is good. " The interview ran in advance of Domingo's June appearance in "Turandot" at Wembley Stadium in London.

The Broad Stage's 2012-13 season, which will be announced Wednesday, will feature appearances by a number of prominent performers including actor Hal Holbrook, violinist Pinchas Zukerman and thespians from Shakespeare's Globe in a production of "Hamlet. " The fifth anniversary season will also mark a new collaborative series with Los Angeles Opera, featuring Placido Domingo conducting a new opera. As reported Wednesday in The Times, a new building is set to rise next to the Broad Stage, providing the organization with more performance and rehearsal space.

Mezzo-soprano Suzanna Guzmán hosts "Open Call," KCET's new Thursday evening show featuring performances at Southern California's top arts schools and institutions. The L.A. native maintains an active performing schedule - her next gig is singing the role of Bertha in San Diego Opera's production of Rossini's "The Barber of Seville," opening April 21 - and helps groom young artists as the director of L.A. County High School for the Arts' Office of Community Engagement. Tell me about "Open Call.

Plácido Domingo will sing the title character in Verdi's "Nabucco" for the first time at the Royal Opera in London next year. The new production, announced Wednesday, will be the fourth new role for Domingo in a little more than a year, all baritone parts. The 71-year-old general director of L.A. Opera, famous for his decades as a tenor, also is slated to make role debuts in Massenet's "Thais" in March in Spain, Verdi's "I Due Foscari" at Los Angeles in September, and Verdi's "La Traviata" at New York's Metropolitan Opera next March.

In three short years, Recovered Voices has become one of Los Angeles Opera's signature programs. But its absence from the company's main-stage calendar next season suggests an uncertain future for the pioneering series. L.A. Opera inaugurated Recovered Voices in the 2006-07 season to explore works by composers whose careers and lives were cut short by the Third Reich. The project is the brainchild of conductor James Conlon, who joined the company as music director that season.

Alicia Garcia Clark, chairwoman of Hispanics for L.A. Opera, likes to talk about the organization's relationship with Plácido Domingo. Clark said that 18 years ago, when she first sought to rally Latino support for the opera, "Plácido Domingo was the first person to say 'What can I do to help?' Other people said they were too busy, and Plácido is one of the busiest people in the world." Catapulted to success by this auspicious start, L.A. Opera's audience has since grown from 1% Latinos to 11%. And with 275 people at last Sunday's Plácido Domingo Awards Dinner at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the night's proceeds came to more than $100,000.

Last week, on one of his rare evenings not spent in makeup sweating under a spotlight, Plácido Domingo watched from a luxury box as the resurgent L.A. Lakers dusted off the New York Knicks 100-90 at Staples Center. Down on the floor, Domingo's friend and fellow Spaniard, the power forward and center Pau Gasol, who was back in action after missing the Lakers' first 11 games with a pulled hamstring, helped lift the home team with 11 points and 16 rebounds. The following night, it was Gasol's turn to watch and applaud as he took in a performance of L.A. Opera's production of Handel's Orientalist fantasia, "Tamerlano."

When you've dressed hundreds, perhaps thousands of performers over the course of more than 20 years, your wardrobe is bound to get crowded with the old and the outdated. Los Angeles Opera is putting more than 2,500 items up for sale today from its costume department in downtown L.A. (The sale runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 330 S. Alameda St.) Some of the clothes hitting the racks were worn by such stars as Placido Domingo, Karita Mattila and Carol Vaness. The sale also includes costumes from productions by Robert Wilson ("Parsifal")