José Carreras was born in Barcelona, Spain, in 1946. Over the course of his lengthy singing career—he made his first appearance at age 11 as a boy soprano in an opera by Manuel de Falla—the renowned tenor has sung more than 60 starring roles on opera stages around the world. After appearing in additional productions as a youth at Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu, plus furthering his vocal studies at its companion music conservatory, Carreras made his adult operatic debut in a principal role while singing opposite fellow Catalan native Montserrat Caballé in a production of Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia. The veteran soprano was also instrumental in Carreras furthering his reputation internationally, as she appeared with him in more than 15 different operas over the ensuing years. Her brother was also the tenor’s manager until the mid-1990s.
Carreras’s opera career took off in the early 1970s, spurred on by his winning an important vocal competition in 1971 that led to his Italian debut the following year as Rodolfo in Puccini’s La bohème. Later that same year [1972] he appeared for the first time on a U.S. stage, singing the role of Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly for New York City Opera. By the time he had reached his 28th birthday, Carreras had sung 24 major tenor roles in various houses across Europe and North America, including starring turns in such Verdi operas as La traviata, Un ballo in maschera, and Rigoletto. He also signed an exclusive recording deal with Philips that guaranteed him the chance to perform as the lead tenor in operas that had fallen into obscurity. Among his more notable recordings was the role of Eléazar in Halévy’s French grand opera, La juive.
While shooting a film version of La bohème in 1987, Carreras was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. A highly aggressive treatment regimen saw him return to the stage after only two years. In 1990 he took part in the first of what became an international musical phenomenon—appearing as one of the “Three Tenors” (the others were Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo) in a concert in Rome. The event was meant to be a one-time thing to provide funding for Carreras’s leukemia foundation, but the immense popularity of the format led to other appearances that extended into the early part of the following decade. Sales from the first concert topped 13 million units, making it the best-selling classical recording ever. Carreras made his final staged appearance in Barcelona in the French opera Samson et Dalila in March 2001. His last operatic performance anywhere took place in Tokyo in July 2002, in the 1927 opera Sly by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari.
Carreras sings “La fleur que tu m’avais jetée” from Bizet’s Carmen, in a 1987 Metropolitan Opera production (with Agnes Baltsa):
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This is a nice peice, Carreras was a favourite opera performer of mine. I never had the fortune of seeing him perform in a live opera production. Do you know if there is a DVD or other ecording of his final performance in Tokyo? Would be great to see it.