Opera singer Placido Domingo has undergone surgery for colon cancer, revealed a spokesman.

The crooner had a cancerous polyp removed last week at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and he was released on Monday, said Nancy Seltzer.

She added that the cancerous growth was small and that Domingo was expected to make a full recovery.

Last month she said that he was to pull out of five March performances of Handel's Tamerlano at the Royal Opera House to undergo what she described as "medically recommended preventive surgery".

And at the time she refused to say why he needed to undergo surgery.

"Aren't certain things allowed to be private?" the Telegraph quoted her as telling she told the New York Times at the time.

It is expected that Domingo, 69, would resume his singing schedule at Milan's Teatro alla Scala on April 16 with a performance of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra. (ANI)