Placido Domingo will open the Los Angeles Opera's season in the title character of Macbeth as the legendary tenor keeps his streak of baritone roles.

LA Opera, of which Domingo is the general director, announced Tuesday it would open its 2016-17 season on September 17 with Verdi's Macbeth.

Domingo, arguably the world's best known opera singer, last year at the Berlin State Opera played Macbeth for the first time.

The 75-year-old Spaniard has in recent years increasingly starred as a baritone and not in the tenor roles for which he became famous, a transition that has reinforced his reputation for versatility even as some critics have been less charitable.

In the upcoming LA Opera season, Domingo will also conduct The Tales of Hoffmann, which will star German soprano Diana Damrau in her company debut.

Season highlights include Akhnaten by US composer Philip Glass in a production conducted by Matthew Aucoin, a rising young musician who was recently named to new position of artist-in-residence at LA Opera.

The fourth largest US company, LA Opera has emphasized avant-garde works and tie-ins with Hollywood, the hometown industry.

LA Opera maintains a smaller "Off Grand" stage for contemporary and experimental fare.

The latest season will feature The Source, the multimedia opera about former US Army analyst turned intelligence leaker Chelsea Manning, and screenings of the classic 1922 silent horror film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror set to original music by Aucoin.

The season will also include Thumbprint, an opera about a Pakistani woman gang-raped to punish her brother.

LA Opera is seeking to break out of "this reflexive, prejudicial sense that opera is only for rich white people," Christopher Koelsch, president and CEO of LA Opera, told reporters in New York.

AFP