The movie opens with a shot of a poster with three men in tuxedos under the name "Los Tres Tenores". Inside a theater in Mexico, one of the men, the dapper and refined French tenor Armand Dupres sings an operatic aria. Backstage, Spanish tenor Ricardo Palacios' wife tries to shoot him in the groin for cheating on her. Police take her away screaming, as Palacios and superstitious Italian tenor, Fabrizio Bernini, prepare to go onstage. Palacios hands his colleagues large Mexican sombreros and tells them to their disgust they must sing a mariachi number together. The concert turns into a disaster. A series of newspaper headlines follow their performance asking "Tenors or Clowns?" and explaining that his singing partners are suing Palacios for fraud. Paparazzi photographs follow showing Bernini kissing Palacios' wife and Dupres mourning his own wife's death.