Your motto is “If I rest, I rust. ” What exactly do you mean by that?
“If I rest, I rust” is something my wife, Marta, had embroidered on a pillow in our living room. She believes it serves as a motto of my lifestyle. In a sense she is right, because I have always felt that to stand still is to retrogress, and I don't like to retrogress if I can help it.

You perform and travel two or three times a week. What drives you to keep up such a grueling schedule?
You describe my schedule as “grueling.” It is not grueling for me because I enjoy everything I'm doing in my professional life, mixing singing with conducting and administering two opera companies. When one enjoys what one does, it isn't a chore. And, for many years now I have made it a rule to have two days of complete rest between performances.

What mountains do you still want to conquer and why?
To date I have sung 121 different roles. But even at this stage in my life, I want to absorb more music, which is true not only in my conductorial activities but also as a singer. In the next three years I will sing three new roles at the Metropolitan, from the Baroque in style to the completely modern. One of the three has been announced. It is Alfonso's Cyrano de Bergerac, which I will sing for the first time in my life next month.

Every artist needs to create. When you sing or conduct you are interpreting someone else's creation and not your own. Or is performance creative?
When you are a performer you are, by definition, a re-creator. In reality, though, you are also a creator because your interpretation is different from someone else's. Otherwise all performances would be carbon copies of others, which would be very dull for the audience. You cannot rewrite the composer's score, but you can bring the notes to life in a completely different fashion from somebody else. That too is “creating” something.

Is there one performance you think of as the most memorable of your career so far?
To speak of the most memorable performance in my career is impossible. But, the one I always remember with amusement is my first performance at the Met. Four days before my scheduled debut as Maurizio in Adriana Lecouvreur, I was called to substitute for Franco Corelli. I had rehearsed Calaf in Turandot all day and had driven home to Teaneck, New Jersey, when the phone rang. It was Rudolf Bing, the Met's General Manager, inquiring how I felt. “Fine,” I said, to which he replied, “In that case you won't mind coming to the opera house immediately and making an unscheduled debut.”

As I was driving down Broadway I was testing my voice. I happened to have the windows open because it was a sultry late- September evening. At a stop light, I noticed the people in the next car laughing at me. I leaned out the window and asked, “Where are you going?” “To the Met,” they replied. “Don't laugh,” I said. “Because in a very short while you will be hearing me!”

If you couldn't have been involved in music, what else would you like to have done as a career?
If I had not found my career in music, I probably would have turned to sports: soccer most likely, or car racing — very dangerous of course. I still try to attend sports events whenever time permits, especially Formula One car races.

You receive thousands of invitations to perform, what made you accept this one?
I love singing in a place where I have not been before. Originally, Dr. Jay Dean, the Music Director at the University of Southern Mississippi approached me to sing during an exhibition called “The Majesty of Spain.” I wasn't available then, but I was able to accept his invitation when he came back to me two years later.

Did the fact that the concert is with a university orchestra influence your decision in any way?
I am excited about performing with an orchestra of young musicians because they are so essential to the future of excellence in music. In addition to my better-known activities, I am also an Artistic Adviser to the Youth Orchestra of the Americas. At the Washington National Opera this past January, we presented a highly successful world premiere of a newly-commissioned opera — Scott Wheeler's Democracy. It was performed mostly by musicians and singers from the Domingo-Carets Young Artist Program of the Washington National Opera, and the entire enterprise received wonderful reviews.