DOMINGO BASKING IN HIS ROLE AS CAUSE PROMOTER

Placido Domingo carries a huge silver tray with tall glasses and a gallon-size pitcher of just-squeezed orange juice. He places it on the patio table of his rented Bel-Air manse, then pours a drink for everyone and sits down about seven feet from his shaded guests.

“The sun,” he says, beaming in the blazing brightness. “I love to feel the sun.”

It is a far different picture of the super-tenor than that remembered from nearly a year ago. Television coverage of Mexico’s earthquake often caught glimpses of a protectively masked Domingo amid the rubble, a recognizable face but one whose anguish could not be distinguished from that of unknown others searching for lost relatives.

Since then, and since the death of several family members there, Domingo has dedicated himself to raising money to aid the now-homeless victims of that catastrophe.

“I suddenly realized,” he says, “that you can use popularity for something really important. Performance can bring great pleasure. But helping a cause is on another level.”

A coterie of producers and business associates sits with him at pool side Sunday morning after his arrival from Madrid, hoping to discuss next Tuesday’s benefit concert at the Universal Amphitheatre.

One prods Domingo to divulge the latest news.

“Oh, yes,” says the tanned and irrepressibly good-natured opera star. “Besides Julie Andrews and John Denver, we can now tell you that Frank Sinatra will be with us for the concert. Last March, I asked him while we both were doing a benefit for Sloan-Kettering (Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City), and he declined. But just now I got a phone call and he wants to join.”

Although Domingo doesn’t use a hard-sell approach, the wheels are constantly turning. He explains how “by applying logic” to his packed schedule he has been able to extend his activities.

In a dramatic announcement just after the Mexican earthquake, he vowed to cancel for one year all his prestigious engagements--thus depleting international opera calendars of a prime attraction.

“It didn’t quite work that way,” he explains. “Some company directors wouldn’t release me. I especially found a lot of difficulty with San Francisco and Houston. But most of them let me cut back the number of performances.

“And while I’m not going to reach my goal of roughly $8 million (for the earthquake victims)--maybe it will come to half that amount.” Domingo says he has raised nearly $3 million to date.

“I have re-thought my career. I see that singing 20 performances a year at the Met is a waste of time, just a routine enforced out of necessity. But I realize now I can take more time away from the stage. Ideally, I could reduce that number to eight, and sing another eight benefit concerts and maybe six for myself. It would be less work and more money. What’s wrong with that?”

Because of his star status, things come together easily for Domingo. The amphitheater concert, for example, is being sponsored by Operation California, a relief group that has delivered more than $40 million in aid during refugee crises worldwide and was originally planning to hold its own pops concert in June. When Operation California officials learned of Domingo’s August concert, it dropped its original plans and joined forces with him.

But before the event takes place, the opera-to-pop singer will fly to Mexico City on Thursday to visit his ailing father. Even that trip includes a “photo opportunity,” with a press conference set at the airport and Armand Hammer to be on the scene lending Domingo a private jet to carry Operation California’s $150,000 of surgical supplies to earthquake victims.

However, relief benefits are not Domingo’s only focus during his current visit to Los Angeles: Not only is he rehearsing the new production of “Otello,” which will open the inaugural season of the Music Center Opera on Oct. 7, but while he’s here, he will be on hand for the Sept. 20 premiere of the Franco Zeffirelli film based on the same Verdi opera--in which he also sings the title role.

Waste not, want not. . . .