José Carreras

José Carreras’ remarkable rollercoaster life has taken him from boyhood poverty in the backstreets of Barcelona to emerging as one of a select few tenors who became a household name outside the rarefied confines of the opera world. In the most revealing interview of his 40-year career, he talks about the commercialisation of opera, technique versus emotional impact, and why he loves singing more than ever before.

Since he is one of the greatest opera tenors of the 20th century, it somehow feels like there ought to be an orchestral fanfare to announce José Carreras’ imminent arrival. “Mr Carreras will be with you in a moment,” says one of what appears to be several assistants in the sterile Barcelona headquarters of the leukaemia research foundation that bears his name, peering anxiously along the corridor into a large boardroom with a table the length of a limousine.

The walls of his private office are decorated with photographs of a youthful-looking Carreras standing triumphantly alongside Luciano Pavarotti, Pl cido Domingo and Montserrat Caballé. At the age of 62, 22 years after he was diagnosed with the leukaemia that struck him down in his operatic prime, Carreras’s voice may not be what it once was, but he is still performing up to 60 concerts a year, mixing Neapolitan and pop songs alongside a carefully selected programme of opera arias.

He still has the matinée idol looks, but in the flesh his frame is surprisingly slight and his hair is now grey. PM meets Carreras the day before his beloved FC Barcelona play Chelsea in the semi-final of the Champions League, and a couple of weeks before he is given the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award at the Classical Brits in London. Carreras rarely gives interviews, but we are here to plug a new compilation album, which is unashamedly aimed at the same target market that lapped up the Three Tenors with such gusto.

It all seems like a world away from his humble upbringing in Sants, one of Barcelona’s poorest areas. Carreras’s father was a traffic policeman and his mother ran a small back-street hairdressing salon. Inspired by the film The Great Caruso, starring Mario Lanza, as a small boy he immediately fell in love with the opera and learned every aria featured in the movie.

Although his parents were poor and had little knowledge of music, they saved up enough money and enrolled him in the Barcelona Conservatory. After two years of vocal tuition, Carreras performed ‘La Donna è Mobile’ from Verdi’s Rigoletto on Spanish National Radio. He made his professional operatic debut at the age of 11, and by the time his voice had broken his singing teacher thought he was good enough to audition for Barcelona’s Gran Teatro del Liceo. His father was keen for José to have a backup plan in case he didn’t make it as a professional singer, so he encouraged him to go to the University of Barcelona. After two years, he abandoned his chemistry degree to concentrate on building an opera career.

Carreras soon landed a minor role in Bellini’s Norma, which quite literally changed the course of his life, as it brought him to the attention of the legendary soprano Montserrat Caballé. Having only sung a few lines at his audition, she was so impressed with the young Carreras that she suggested her manager take him under his wing and asked him to sing with her in Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia in 1970.

He made his international debut alongside Caballé in a performance of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda at the Royal Festival Hall the following year, and he was soon being snapped up by the world’s most prestigious opera houses. Over the next couple of years, he appeared at the Vienna State Opera (Rigoletto), Covent Garden (La Traviata), the New York Metropolitan Opera (Tosca), and La Scala, Milan (Un Ballo in Maschera). Whatever Carreras sang, he won rapturous praise from both critics and public alike with the sheer emotional depth of his richly coloured lyric tenor voice.

By this point in his career, Carreras was considered one of the world’s leading tenors, eventually amassing a repertoire of over 60 leading roles. He numbered amongst his admirers many of the world’s leading conductors, from Leonard Bernstein to Herbert von Karajan. In 1987, everything changed overnight for Carreras when he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and was given a one-in-ten chance of survival. Miraculously, he made a complete recovery after undergoing a gruelling round of treatment involving chemotherapy, radiation therapy and a bone marrow transplant.

He established the José Carreras International Leukaemia Foundation the following year and returned to the opera stage in 1989, once again alongside Montserrat Caballé. Carreras was in his early 40s when he teamed up with Luciano Pavarotti and Pl cido Domingo to form the Three Tenors, several years younger than either of them and the least well known of the trio. In an episode of the American comedy show Seinfeld, Carreras was referred to as “the third tenor, you know...that other one,” whose name nobody could remember. He may have been overshadowed by both Pavarotti and Domingo at times, but they considered Carreras to be “the soul of the Three Tenors”.

The idea of putting Pavarotti, Carreras and Domingo together on the same stage was originally conceived to raise money for Carreras’ leukaemia charity and to welcome him back to the stage after his recovery, and they made their debut in Rome on the eve of the 1990 World Cup in front of a global television audience. Their performance of ‘Nessun Dorma’ from Puccini’s Turandot became their signature, and their debut album went on to become the biggest-selling recording in the history of classical music. The Three Tenors phenomenon was praised by some for introducing opera to a global audience outside the classical music world, while purists criticised the trio for dumbing down opera.

Although Carreras continued to appear in opera houses across the world, occasionally adding new roles to his repertoire, there is no doubt that his voice had lost some of its elasticity, even if it had lost none of its emotional resonance. His operatic roles diminished during the 1990s, ending with his farewell to the Liceo — where he had originally started his career — in Saint-Sa ns’ Samson Et Dalila in 2001. His final appearance on an opera stage came the following year, when he reprised the title role in Wolf-Ferrari’s Sly.

In his prime, José Carreras’ ineffably moving, velvety voice was a jewel of a tool that had a truly mesmerising beauty. Shot through with an emotional depth that few tenors of the modern era could even dream of matching, his uniquely passionate delivery and the expressiveness of his phrasing made him a star far beyond the confines of the opera world. Above all, Carreras is a great communicator with a voice that could melt the stoniest of hearts.

“There was a lot of mutual admiration between each other, and there was also a kind of healthy competition between us when we were singing together on stage.”

José Carreras: “When I was 10 years old, I got a present from my parents — a recording of Neapolitan songs by Giuseppe Di Stefano — and I immediately fell in love with his wonderful voice. He has always been my idol, and I later had the chance to spend some time with him. I was influenced by all of the tenors that I listened to when I was a student. You learn from everybody, from each and every one. It’s very difficult to say which of them had the biggest influence on me, but it was probably Corelli, Björling, Gedda and Montserrat Caballé. She had a very big influence in my life and on my career.

“Sinatra is untouchable in his field. When you talk about him, you are talking about the best of the best. I don’t think there has ever been any other singer that sang like him. Di Stefano, Sinatra... I love these kinds of singers. They are what in Italian they call ‘dicitore’. They sing with the words; not only making a beautiful sound, not only singing with all of this incredible technique, but expressing themselves through the lyrics and, of course, through the music.

“Verdi used to say, ‘Prima la musica’ — first the music and then the lyrics — because when we are talking about opera, we are talking about melodrama, not only a beautiful musical sound. Melodrama means expressing what the text says, what the lyric says. I think this is absolutely fundamental for an opera singer.”

PM: There’s an incredibly moving piece of film of you performing ‘My Way’, with Sinatra sitting in the front row of the audience, wiping a tear from his eye. What an amazing compliment to you, don’t you think?

JC: “I have seen that moment on film. It is from a concert that Luciano, Pl cido and myself did in 1994. It was very emotional for me. I actually met him a couple of times, and he was just like he was in the movies. He was... Sinatra [laughs].

“Certain types of singers, they want to win the audience over and to convince the audience with the sheer beauty of the sound or with their technical ability. Other types of singers try to convince the audience with their approach to every word, to every phrase. I think this is a reflection of the personality of each of us.

“Singing with real heart — with an emotional quality that really moves people — I think that this is something you are born with, so it is innate and it is inside you. If you have this kind of feeling or instinct for music, you can certainly improve upon it, but I really think you have to be born with it.”

“It is important to be able to play well enough to accompany yourself or to look at the score.”

PM: In order for you to lose yourself within the music, would you say that it is vital not to be too self-conscious and to try to forget about the technicalities of what you are singing?

JC: “When you are singing, you have to constantly think about what you are actually singing. Not only thinking about the text and the music, because that is routine and it comes naturally when you have sung an aria 100 times, but you have to constantly think about how you will project your voice. I have always said that the voice is the vehicle, the brain is the filter and the soul is what you express, so therefore it comes from the brain through to the voice and then through to the heart and the soul. It is a journey, but all of this has to happen simultaneously and in no time at all.”

JC: “Well, sometimes you need to think about it, maybe because you don’t feel 100 percent during the performance. Sometimes the important thing is not only how we do it, but to arrive at the end of a performance, so therefore you have to use all of your capabilities to get through it.

“You have to try to forget everything else going on in your life, but, of course, sometimes your personal problems may unconsciously affect you, and maybe your interpretation changes when there is a serious problem. When you do have problems in your life, you sing with a different type of emotion, whether that is in a positive way or in a negative way.”

JC: “That’s right, because we are depending on this inch here [touches Adam’s apple], and our vocal cords can be affected by so many things, whether that is air conditioning, climate, what you eat and what you drink, how much you talk or how much you sleep.

“You have to treat your voice like a woman, with lots of care, consideration and attention. In Spanish or Italian the voice is female — ‘la voce’ — so therefore you need to take a lot of care of it. On the other hand, sometimes you also have to work with the voice so that it does not become too lazy. Actually, taking care of your voice is maybe not the same as the way you would treat a woman, but maybe the way you would treat a horse [laughs].”

JC: “I always thought that you sing well or you don’t sing well, and somebody who really sings well can sing an opera aria and a song equally well, whether that is a pop song or a Neapolitan song. If you have a pure instinct for the music, and if you have what we call real talent, then you have the talent and the ability to sing ‘My Way’ or to sing Carmen.

“If an opera singer was to go to the lighter repertoire, he can certainly do that, but maybe not as well as those other singers can do it. I am sure nobody can sing ‘My Way’ like Sinatra did, and nobody can sing like Tom Jones [starts singing ‘It’s Not Unusual’]. To try to copy those singers performing a pop song would be completely wrong. You have to be yourself when you sing.

“I have great admiration for Tom Jones. Actually, I just attended one of his concerts in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago, and he is in fantastic shape. A true performer like Tom Jones has won the audience over before he has even sung a note.”

JC: “Well, I think a certain discipline and professional rigorousness is fundamental in every field, whether you are a pop singer or an opera singer. But, of course, in the case of an opera singer, what we sing is much more taxing, much more difficult from a physical and a technical point of view. In an opera house, there is no amplification, so the way you project your voice and the way you have to support your voice requires another kind of effort entirely. Therefore, I think opera singers have to be in even better physical shape, and I also think that if you want to be a serious professional and you want to succeed, you have to observe a certain discipline.”

JC: “Of course, charisma is incredibly important, but there are other elements which are also vital. The composer Pietro Mascagni once said: ‘To be an opera singer, you also need the voice.’ I think this really explains everything, because to become an opera singer, it is a package in every sense. There have to be so many ingredients in the dish to become an opera singer. Of course, the meat has to be there if you cook a dish, but the other ingredients are just as important — the spices and the herbs.”

“Of course, [in the studio] there is not the excitement of an audience, but I believe that the excitement really comes from the music itself.”

JC: “Much more now. I think that I can find new things every time I listen to the same piece, and I think that I also learn more about how to listen to music as time goes by. There is a danger that when you listen to an opera, particularly an opera that you have sung 150 times, if you see it only from a professional perspective, you don’t know how to enjoy the music, so you only see the things that are not right — this was wrong or that was wrong, or the orchestra were not playing well, or that F-sharp was too sharp or too flat. And this is wrong. You have to enjoy what the art is trying to give you. I think this is very important.

“Of course, as an artist and as an interpreter, I think that technique is very important. You cannot go on stage without technique and then sing like Tarzan [laughs]. It is obvious. You need the technique, and there are certain bases and there are certain rules, but I would never sacrifice the emotion for the sake of the technique. Communicating emotions to the audience is more important than projecting a very precise, accurate sound to the audience. The way I have always communicated emotions to the audience may not be the key to my success, but I am convinced that singing with heart is more important than singing with technique alone.”

JC: “To make each audience member feel as if you are performing for them alone would be the dream of any artist, that’s for sure. If the person sitting there thinks this is what I am able to communicate to each of them, I think that would be my ultimate goal in terms of my performance.”

JC: “Yes, particularly with singers, because singing is the most human way of translating music. Although, of course, this can also happen with a conductor or with instrumentalists.”

JC: “Most of the operas I sang, I knew them before I went in to rehearse them, because I started listening to operas from the age of about seven. So when somebody asked me to do Carmen, I already knew Carmen, but, of course, I had to prepare for it in a professional way and in a musical way, to be strict and disciplined with the score. Technically speaking, to know the role in order to be able to sing it, I need one week.”

JC: “Yes, but the other important thing is how to actually get into the role, how to put your own personality, your own perspective and your own emotions into the role. That is another story entirely.”

JC: “Yes, exactly, we would usually do that for one week, but that is definitely the easiest part of the process [chuckles]. From the very first time I sang Carmen to the last time I sang Carmen, every time you are performing that role you are learning and discovering new things about it. I really think that this is what makes it all so interesting.”

JC: “Absolutely. Well, not only the experience, but I also think that with age you become more mature as a man. Therefore, maybe certain feelings are much more profound, so you can then bring more to the role. With every role you take on, you are developing new ideas, new feelings and new perspectives on the work, so therefore I would say that that can be put down to experience.”

José Carreras was born in Barcelona, where he started his musical education and made his operatic debut, at the Gran Teatre del Liceu.

JC: “I probably worked with Karajan for 14 years, but I also worked with Leonard Bernstein, Abbado, Muti... From each and every one of them, you learn something. When you talk about great conductors like them, we are talking about great musicians and great personalities. They give you a suggestion, sometimes they impose themselves upon you in a certain way, but this is part of the game and you have to accept it.

“No one I have ever worked with has been as charismatic and communicative as Karajan was. On top of that, when I first started singing with him I was in my late 20s, which is still quite young in opera terms, so Karajan was able to mould me like a piece of wet clay. Looking back on my time with him now, I only have words of gratitude and admiration for him.

“There is no doubt that Bernstein was one of the greatest. Karajan and Bernstein both had very different musical perspectives, although I think that both of them were very deep into the score. I would say that Bernstein was a bit more transparent in the way that he approached the music, and maybe Karajan was a little bit more rigorous and paid closer attention to detail.”

JC: “It is probably the way that I try not to mask the way I feel, and I present myself totally naturally. I am not sure, but that could be the reason why people connect with my voice on an emotional level. The important thing is that they do [chuckles]. This comes spontaneously.

“I think I am a genuine singer who sings from the heart. If you do not do that, then what is the point? I at least try to put real emotion and heart into it every time I sing. It is not only the music that is important to me, the lyrics are also very important to me as well.”

JC: “I think that I have been lucky enough that for my ability and for my type of voice, I sang more or less whatever my voice allowed me to sing. I regret that I never sang Verdi’s Othello, because it is a fantastic role, and I think that it is one of the best tenor roles it is possible to do. On the other hand, I also know that that is not an opera for me, because I do not have the right type of voice for Othello.”

JC: “For the Italian opera? Well, if we consider the operas from Mozart to be Italian, then I would say both Mozart and Verdi. Both, in my opinion, are geniuses, each one in their own field. But there are composers in the Italian repertoire, in the French repertoire — Puccini, Bizet, Donizetti — all of the Russian repertoire, Tchaikovsky and so on. There are so many. But in terms of true genius, in my opinion, it has to be Mozart, Verdi, and in a completely different field, Wagner. Of course, I understand that Wagner’s music has been associated with the Nazis, but Wagner died before Hitler was born, so I really do not think that this association excludes him from being a musical genius. Music is probably one of the best ways to try to break down barriers between people of different thinking or different religions.”

JC: “Whatever gives you more knowledge and insight into the music, I think this can only be a good thing. At the very least, the ability to play the piano is important for any opera singer; not that I am saying you have to play the piano like Rubinstein or anything [chuckles]. It is important to be able to play well enough to accompany yourself or to look at the score. To be honest, I am quite bad at the piano, but I can at least do that.”

JC: “You could think that because you are in a studio, there isn’t the excitement of an audience to sing to, so therefore maybe your interpretation can change. But I believe the emotion comes from the music itself. I don’t see much difference. I always loved going to the studio and singing for hours, because it gives me the possibility to try to express the music the way I really want, and if something is not perfect, you can repeat it and record it again. Of course, there is not the excitement of an audience, but I believe that the excitement really comes from the music itself.”

JC: “On the day of a performance, I try to just concentrate on the performance itself and I try to avoid anything else. I always eat light and I only drink water, or maybe a coffee before I go on stage. So there are no raw eggs or anything of that kind [chuckles]. Normally, if I can, even getting 20 minutes or half an hour of sleep before I go on stage makes a big difference for me. Really, the whole day is concentrated on the performance in the evening. Somehow, you are like a sportsman. The key is all to do with focus, so you only have to think of the goal in front of you, which, of course, is the performance.

“What I try to do is to observe a certain kind of routine. In general, I sleep as long as I can, and then I have breakfast and go for a walk. After that, I eat something for lunch and then I rest. If I need to concentrate a little bit on the programme, then I do that. I like to have a lot of time at the concert hall or the opera house, so I need to be there at least two hours before to warm up in the dressing room. I then like to be left alone in silence in my dressing room for a while immediately before I go on stage.”

PM: You were diagnosed with leukaemia in 1987 and were given a one-in-ten chance of survival. When you had recovered, was it difficult to build up the physical and mental strength to perform again?

JC: “Of course, at the beginning I needed to recover when I overcame the illness, and I also needed to build up my physical and mental strength again. Eventually, I felt good enough to go on and to travel around the world and to sing again, although not as much as I used to do. At certain times in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, my schedule was a little over the top. I sang 120 performances a year at one point. At the moment I do between 50 and 60 performances per year, maximum.”

JC: “One of the few things I have learned in life in the last few years is to say no [laughs]. And the venues are not running away either, so you don’t need to put pressure on yourself to over-perform.”

JC: “In my opinion, the approach to the music has to be the same. You cannot change the way you sing, whether you are singing for 200 people or 200,000. It would be wrong to sing differently, so when you are singing in a large stadium, the amplification has to do the projection, not you. It doesn’t matter, because you feel affected by the audience, whatever size it is. In a certain way, I would actually say that it is more difficult to sing in a small room for 200 people than in a big stadium for 100,000 people.”

PM: Musically speaking, when you were performing with Domingo and Pavarotti, you seemed to really feed off each other and spark off each other. Would you agree with that?

JC: “What I can say is that there was a lot of mutual admiration between each other, and there was also a kind of healthy competition between us when we were singing together on stage. I learned something from them every single time we sang together. They were such fantastic artists. To share the stage with them, for me it was such a treat, not only as a professional, but also as an opera lover.

“With Luciano, you can talk about his incredible technique and about how to sing certain things. Of course, with Pl cido as well, I think his musicality was amazing, being the great musician and tenor that he is. As an opera singer, there were always so many things to learn from them both. Do you know of any profession where you ever stop learning? Whether it is music or medicine, you never stop learning; particularly in artistic professions you are learning constantly.”

PM: Were you concerned about the possibility of diluting opera music by marketing it to a mass audience as opposed to performing it purely for opera buffs, as you would all normally have done?

JC: “No. I know that there has been a certain amount of criticism and cynicism about the Three Tenors, and we have to accept that because it is part of the game. I think we respected everybody’s opinions, but fortunately, I also think that there were many more people who thought that it was a good way to try to bring this beautiful music to a much larger audience through the recordings and the concerts on television. The repertoire we sang — or 90 percent of it — was repertoire that Caruso or Gigli were singing.

“Of course, there was a group of people who did not consider what we did to be real art, but so what? It was entertainment. Isn’t opera entertainment? Is classical music only meant to be a high-brow art form for a select few to enjoy, or is it also entertainment? Music is for everyone.”

PM: At one point, the Three Tenors performed at a concert in Los Angeles in front of a television audience of 1.4 billion people. Knowing that so many people are watching, does that affect your performance?

JC: “For an artist, it is absolutely fantastic that you can reach such a large amount of people, but it definitely does not affect your voice, although it maybe affects your brain [laughs]. Of course, you are very tense, but you just have to deal with it. You simply have to work to the best of your ability.”

PM: What is your attitude to the current dominance of ‘crossover’ music within the classical music business? Do you believe it will ultimately prove to be a negative thing for opera?

JC: “I really do not want to be misunderstood here, but nowadays the television channels and certain record companies want to sell to the audience the idea that this is opera, and it is not. It is crossover music, even if they sing a tune from an opera. I do not actually see this as a negative thing. I see it as a positive thing — but it is not the real thing. It is not opera.”

PM: You have been given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Classical Brits this year. Looking back on your career with the benefit of hindsight, do you have to pinch yourself when you think of all that you have achieved?

JC: “It is a great honour to be given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Classical Brits, and I can only say that I am a very fortunate man. Whatever I dreamed when I was a boy, I have been lucky enough that those dreams became reality. I am very happy and I have everything I have ever dreamed of. Even when I was going through very difficult moments in my life, I was lucky enough to overcome such a severe disease. I couldn’t really ask for more, could I?”

JC: “Work, always work. We have a lot of meetings for the Foundation, and then I go to Korea for two weeks for some concerts, and then after that I come to London for the Classical Brit Awards. But tomorrow I have a very important project — perhaps the most important of all — and I am very excited about this one. It is Barcelona versus Chelsea in the Champions League [laughs].”

JC: “No, this is not what concerns me. I’ll be happy to know that during my professional life I had the possibility of transmitting my emotions and making people really feel something, and that is it. If somebody listens to one of my recordings in 100 years and they can still feel that there is something true in my voice and they can feel something that can touch them, for me as an artist that would be wonderful. I think that for any artist that would be a privilege, because if the generations to come can still listen to what we did and still appreciate it, both as an artist and as a man, that would be the ultimate reward.”

JC: “I do not have a deadline and I do not know when I am going to stop performing. How does one know? It depends how my voice feels and how I feel with my voice, but I have to say that the closer you see the end, the more you enjoy what you do. So therefore, I am sure I am going to go on for another few years.”

JC: “It probably is difficult, but first of all it is down to your own feelings. After that, it is down to the people you really trust around you, which is very, very important. I have people around me who will say to me, ‘Look, José, let’s go to the football and just forget about singing’ [laughs]. I am sure you know what I mean. It still makes me very happy to go on stage and to be able to sing. There may be a commercial demand, but there are personal and physical limits, so let’s see.”

JC: “Well, of course, I feel great and I feel untouchable when I am on stage, in the sense that nothing can bother me when I am up there. I am only concerned about the performance and the audience, so the rest of the world disappears for those two hours or whatever it is on stage.”

José Carreras

Performing Opera