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 Leading Man

Poised as opera's leading man Tenor José Cura sounds like a star; it can't
hurt that he looks like one

USA Today
12/11/1998
David Patrick Stearns

WASHINGTON -- Long ago, opera fans resigned themselves to having the brilliant, heroic tenor voice encased in the dumpiest of bodies and deployed by the dimmest of intellects. Then along comes tall, smart, handsome José Cura.

So is it any wonder that this 36-year-old Argentine is being mentioned in the same breath as the hugely successful Three Tenors? Perhaps the ultimate endorsement comes from one of the three, Placido Domingo, who acted as conductor on Cura's Puccini Arias disc as well as for his just-concluded run in Samson et Dalila at the Washington Opera. The two also will share the Metropolitan Opera opening night in September 1999. In a double bill, Cura will sing Cavalleria Rusticana, Domingo I Pagliacci.

Cura wears Domingo's mantle casually. It's simply a collaboration between friends. ''People tend to think that everybody hates everybody in the opera world, but often it's the contrary,'' he says over lunch at the Watergate Hotel.

No doubt Cura is maintaining his sanity amid such heady life changes by not dwelling on the large picture. Cura recently tantalized the opera world with an acclaimed performance of Otello, the summit of Italian tenor roles. He'll record it in a few years -- details of the project are top-secret -- which should allow him to write his own career ticket.

Whether or not he has vocal longevity, he has strength of character. A trained conductor, composer and man of many opinions, he's been called arrogant. Cura thinks not: ''I think the word 'secure' was canceled from the dictionary.''

Security is essential in the seesawing, backbiting opera world. In Cura's case, it comes from having so many skills other than singing. He orchestrated and composed parts of his new solo album of Argentine songs, Anhelo. He's also a body builder and kung-fu expert. And with a wife and three children waiting for him at home in Paris, his priorities ensure that any given performance is hardly a do-or-die experience.

''I've never had a big disaster onstage. And if I make a mistake, I feel terrible. In soccer, you can be in front of the goal and miss it. You can be in front of a high note and have a problem. The more developed your technique, the better your health, the better your chances are'' of avoiding disaster.

From the way he talks, it all seems rather easy. Granted, he's had years of training in Argentina, but he's still learned 30 roles in the past four years, including the leading tenor role in La Forza del Destino in one day. But he's careful not to fall back on his own facility: ''Getting the notes in the throat, that takes time. You can't even estimate that.''

That can be particularly difficult with the creaky dramaturgy that often comes with the great music of opera. In fact, Cura's run in Samson was the first time he'd been heard in the USA in something he likes. In Chicago, he sang Fedora, an opera he calls ''a bitter pill,'' and in Los Angeles, it was Norma, in which ''you feel like you're in the middle of nonsense.''

That, combined with the opera world's penchant for making egotistical monsters out of the nicest of people, makes one fear that he might follow in the footsteps of the also-young tenor Roberto Alagna, who is walking out on major opera companies but enjoying a booming recording career.

Cura defends Alagna while stressing that he has his own career route: ''He's a human being and has the right to choose how he wants to make his life. But I'm like a racing animal. You can use it to do many things, but the moment it's in the track, it's happy. I can sing concerts, pop music, do a movie, whatever. But the animal in me feels complete, satisfied and fulfilled onstage.''

The New Domingo?

Critics have heralded Cura as the new Domingo, the world’s leading dramatic tenor today, who is also artistic director of the Washington Opera and about to take on the same role with the Los Angeles Opera.  But the Argentine singer refuses to be labeled as Domingo’s heir-apparent.

“Great artists like Placido have no heirs,” Cura told Reuters in an interview as he took a shower after three grueling hours playing Samson.  “Whoever follows wants to have the same said of him 30 years down the road.  It’s a natural development, like Maradona succeeded Pele and Ronaldo succeeded Maradona,” he added, referring to the soccer legends.

Cura’s commanding, athletic presence on the stage allows him to give vitality and realism to characters that too often have been played as static figures.  In the last act of “Samson et Dalila,” Cura in chains struggles on a treadmill and finally topples the pillars of the temple over a Philistine orgy

“This kind of acting it essential to ensure the future of opera and draw new generations of audiences to what many people consider a boring old art form,” the tenor said.

After a 1976 military coup in Argentina ruined the family business, Cura worked as a body-building instructor and a grocery store clerk to pay for his music studies and supplement his small wages as a chorus singer at the Colon Theatre.  When doors closed on the budding singer, he left for Italy in 1991 to further his career.

Difficult Early Years Paid Off.

But those difficult early years have paid off.

“All that physical activity and muscle-building allow me today to put on a spectacle like the third act of ‘Samson et Dalila’ that few singers can do,” he said.

Cura says his “Otello” owes more to Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier on the movie screen and the stage than to earlier tenors.

“If you see Othello as a warrior and hero, you might as well strut about the stage singing like crazy at the top of your voice, which is easier to do and people like,” he said.  But he sees Othello as more than just a jealous husband – as a mercenary who was used by society, a victim of racism, a fallen hero who comes apart and kills his wife, then commits suicide.

His exceptional tenor voice, which has a deep, almost baritone registry, had led critics to see Cura as an “Otello” in waiting.  Then in May of last year he lived up to those expectations in a widely acclaimed performance in Turin that was telecast throughout Europe.

With his commitment to acting, Cura is drawn to Puccini by the humanism of his characters.  He recorded Puccini’s 21 arias in London in July, conducted by Placido Domingo, and his “Puccini Arias” won favourable reviews for a singer who has risen mainly on the strength of his live performances.

“Puccini is a composer that allows me to be a real actor on the stage, through characters that express real sentiments and who could have easily existed in real life,” Cura said.

He points to Cavaradossi, the artist and lover in Puccini’s Tosca” who is jailed and executed for political reasons by the secret police, and the characters in “La Boheme,” a penniless writer and a seamstress, both young people who fight to survive as best they can.

“In real life,” he said, “one of these characters might even have been a bodybuilding instructor.”

For the Record. . .

The Singer

June / July 1998

Surely a man in his position could afford to take things a little easier and spend more time in the relative comfort of the studio, rather than dashing about the world from stage to stage?  But Cura counters me with a statement that reveals the essence of what drives him, ‘When you are a stage animal, you need to be on stage.  It’s a physical necessity.  It’s like being a mariner – you need to be on your boat.  And even if you can buy the most sophisticated computer, to enable you to ‘sail’ without moving from your house, it’s not like being on the sea – the smell is different!  You know, today a lot of things are very easy and we forget the essence, the sense of things.  It’s very easy today to say, “I am an opera singer” and to only be on the stage a couple of months in the year.  I am not a kind of singer who can live in the studio, like some of my colleagues.  I am a tenor, who from time to time has a week to do a recording and not one who lives in the studio and from time to time risks a couple of productions a year.  I am not trying to be the first tenor in the world.  Maybe that’s why I am just a good tenor – just that – a good, honest musician who does his work.’

It would also seem to make sense that the singer is more in touch with the reality of what their voice is capable of if it is constantly put to the test on stage, rather than the artificiality of the studio.  ‘In a studio anything is possible.  It was possible for me to do Rinuccio’s aria from Gianni Schicchi, which is not in my repertoire, on the Puccini CD, just as someone else might sing the death of Otello on a recording, for the pleasure and challenge of doing it.  If you do it well, that’s ok, but it’s another thing to perform it, because the result is completely different.  On stage, it is a physical thing.  If I had to make a cheap comparison, I could say that it is one thing to make love with the woman you love, body to body, and another to make love with a virtual video game.  You might have an orgasm at the end of the day, but it won’t be the same.’  But the adrenalin can flow in the studio as well, I argue.  However, Cura points out the pitfalls of being lured by the vanity of trying to produce perfection, ‘You might get the adrenalin,’ he says, ‘but you are alone.  It’s like masturbation.  When you are on stage, you are interacting with the audience.  You are giving and receiving – and risking your balls.’

And Cura also tries to carry the raw emotion of the stage for which he is so well liked over into his recordings.  ‘When I did the Puccini recording, with quite a few imperfect notes, a couple of imperfect phrases, I did it in four recording sessions – 21 songs – that means four songs a session.  That means it is almost live.  And when the engineer started editing it, at a certain point I said, OK, now we stop.  Leave it like that.  “But we can correct it,” he said, and I said, no, don’t touch it any more, because it is alive like this.  Mistakes are part of being human and if you are good enough, that’s OK, but if you are perfect, you run the risk of being disgusting, because everybody knows that perfection doesn’t exist.  So, if you have perfection, something is wrong.’  And if this sounds like self-defense, you only have to look at the following that this tenor has, not to mention the strict self-criticism he applies to himself, and the very evident desire he has to be true to himself and his audience, ‘It’s one thing to be compared with others and another to be compared with yourself.  If they say Cura is not as good as Corelli, that's fine, because it’s true, but if they Cura on stage is not as good as Cura on CD, then I am in extreme danger.  One of the best compliments I had recently was when someone said, “You know, the CD only reflects 50% of how wonderful your voice is.”  Some critics said that I shouldn’t have sobbed because I have done these roles on stage and I know the pain that the character is feeling.  I mean, in Manon Lescaut, you have her dying in your arms – I mean, what the hell are you supposes to do, if not sob?  Come on!  I don’t understand how some people can record music without the emotions, the feelings.  In a way I admire them because they don’t get involved, they don’t suffer the emotions, they don’t go home and go without sleep for three days.  Maybe I will end my career before them and be “old” before them, but I consider my art to be a mixture of joy and love and sufferance – that’s life.’

If the topic has to do with the new international stars of song, then naturally the name of José Cura comes up today, too. In Graz, where in 1992 he had taken part in a singing competition as a then still relatively unknown artist, the Argentinean tenor will be singing arias and songs this Sunday.

Wolfgang Schaufler/ translation: Monica B.

Graz: “Perhaps it was a disaster, artistically speaking”, says José Cura about his opera debut in Rosario, Argentina’s second largest city, where he, then nineteen-year-old, sang an aria. “But I was very successful in spite of it. Probably because of my physical presence, my temperament.” In the meantime, these indisputable assets complement a very well trained, mature voice. It is therefore no accident, when in today’s search for new dramatic tenors, the name of the Argentine is mentioned alongside Roberto Alagna time and again.

 

Alagna and Cura are both in their mid thirties. That an aura of unspent, youthful freshness still surrounds Cura, has to do primarily with the fact that his career is at least five years younger. In other ways, too, those two, onto whom all hopes are pinned, differ from each other fundamentally. Cura matches the prototype of a Latin-American macho. His body shows all the signs of regular fitness training. And too, he hasn’t exactly inherited obligingly courteous friendliness.

Robust Trumpet

Cura is intelligent enough to know that everybody has just been waiting for someone like him. His trumpet-like (vocal) height corresponds as far as substance is concerned to his giant-like appearance. It is robust, but also has the necessary flexibility at its disposal. Every now and then, his timbre sounds slightly metallic. But one can also term this to be effective, penetrating power.

 

Add to it, that for the most part, Cura, who even composes or takes up the baton from time to time, conceives of his arias in their musical completeness. Thus, he doesn’t celebrate them as never-ending bits and pieces of love-sick yearning, but rather integrates them organically into the dramaturgical arc, the dramatic structure, of an act. It was this musicality, no less, which guaranteed a ‘carte blanche’ for the artist at the Vienna State Opera. Whenever he wants to sing there, he is going to be welcome. On the 27^th of January, 2001, the 100^th anniversary of Giuseppe Verdi’s death, he is engaged to present ‘Otello’ in that very place.

 

One cannot help but have the image in one’s mind of the easy-going, happy-go-lucky stage beau, to whom everything (including the adoration of any number of groupies) comes easily and with sheer effortlessness. But that is only half of the truth. Behind the success are bone dry work and full-blown crises overcome.

 

At the age of 22, his voice was “completely out of control”, tells Cura, “I was like a hot-tempered race horse, always nervous, jumpy, never still. I gave up on myself; my performances and achievements didn’t please me. And it is very difficult to find a good teacher who is sensitive to your individual needs.”

 

But there was also something good about the delayed start of his career. “It takes”, so Cura, “at least ten years, until a pianist or singer has developed into something half way interesting. The big difference in me and my colleagues is that I was very well prepared, when I stuck my nose into the international business.”

 

After the first successes in Buenos Aires, Cura initially went to Italy for three years, where Vittorio Terranova (“the Italian Alfredo Kraus”) put on the ultimate finishing touches. Then he just about exploded onto the music scene, whose limitations were too confining for him right from the start. “My solo performances are more what you would call ‘shows’, not the usual recitals. If I feel like it, I accompany myself on the guitar, sing a Beatles song. It’s amazing, how well the audience reacts to it.”

 

With his career established so close to the popular field, the step to an ensemble  succeeding the ‘Three Tenors’ would then not be a big one? Cura signals his refusal: “Only yesterday, managers were here. You cannot imagine what sums they offered me. But I am not going to do that. I want to go my own way and do my thing.” He does not want to tell, which colleagues were also under consideration.

 

That he does not refuse to give himself to modern music also speaks for Cura’s seriousness. One can have a very detailed conversation with him about Penderecki, and should things on the other hand digress to Bach’s Fugues, he proves himself equally firm in the saddle there.

 

Cura’s weak point is the still relatively small repertoire. Even though he indicates that he has thirty roles at his disposal, he has indeed won his triumphs with a handful of parts (Chenier, Radames, Don José, Chevalier). His musical intelligence will surely let him make up this deficiency very soon.

 

When Cura presents his evening of arias and songs on Sunday at the Stepaniensaal in Graz, it will by the way be a rendezvous with his past. In 1992, the then still unknown Cura took part in the Tagliavini-Competition in that very location. Now, he returns as an international star.

 

Der Standard, January 9/10, 1998

  For tenors in the Italian repertoire one of the supreme challenges is the title role of Verdi’s Otello, a part that vocally and dramatically requires huge reserves of stamina, power and conviction.  The Argentinian tenor José Cura took up the gauntlet last year in Turin, under the direction of Claudio Abbado, and was instantly deluged with requests to sing the role here, there and everywhere.  ‘The day after, even the hour after, I had proposals to sing Otello all over the place.  If I wanted, I could sing this role the rest of my life.’  But typically, given the care and consideration Cura has employed in building his career to its present position, he has decided to put the role on hold.  At 35, he has reached a point where he can afford to pick and choose.

Cura speaks articulately about his work and realistically about his profession.  Even the pressure, which at his level is fearsome, doesn’t daunt him: ‘I will never allow someone else to put more pressure on me that I can cope with.’  Given the discipline and judgment that have marked his career choices so far, admirers of tenor singing on the grand scale can look forward to many ears of his individual, artistically ambitious work.

Palermo, you won’t miss Pavarotti

 José Cura is ready for the challenge of Aida at the Massimo

Italian Interview 1998

Tenor José Cura: I Am Proud To Sing In Palermo.

Interview with José Cura by Antonella Filippi/translation by Monica B.

 

Besides being a jealous Otello, José Cura is above all a very good and gentle father. And like Radamès, the protagonist in ‘Aida’, whom he will portray in Palermo, he, too, loves a woman passionately; she is certainly not a slave- but his wife. He speaks Italian extremely well and with a pleasant Spanish cadence. In conversation, he gives the impression that at 35 he is already at an age where he is not playing himself; he is himself. As far as his life is concerned, naturally. In his job, on the other hand, performances follow each other in theaters around the globe.

 

You had already come to Palermo, to the Politeama, in ’95 for ‘Francesca da Rimini’. What do you remember about the city and the public?

 

I want to smile if I think that, sitting in a bar in front of the Massimo, I was wondering how it was possible to keep one of the most beautiful theaters in Europe closed for so many years. It’s incredible: the moment is here; and with it the task of reopening it.

 

How do you judge a city that has permitted its theater to remain closed for such a long time without a hint of rebellion? Behavior unthinkable in Milan or Vienna……

 

That’s true. In the face of these events, certain stereotypes about Sicily and Sicilians come back to mind, which I, frankly, do not want to believe. It is difficult to judge since I live so far away. I can only say that as far as I’m concerned, it will be a unique emotional experience for me.

 

What does ‘Aida’ mean to a performer?

 

A big test. For years, I have sought to avoid the character of Radamès; it used to overwhelm me to deal with him. It was Zeffirelli who convinced me, telling me that he would have accepted the directing of ‘Aida’ only if I was going also. Now, I am pleased with the result.

Without Zeffirelli, the Radamès of the Massimo will be different from the Japanese one?

 

Now, the planning, the setting up of the character stays forever like that, perhaps evolved over time and improved from the vocal point of view. At Palermo, I will have to fit into a different group: I am not the fool, who says upon arrival: “Either things are done just as I say, or I’m getting out.” This kind of behavior isn’t a part of me, and it is of no help, not even when it’s all artists of great depth.

 

Your debut…..

 

My career is a bit complicated to tell about. I’m going to attempt it. I had a leading role for the first time in Trieste in ’93, singing in a contemporary opera. The following year, I interpreted ‘La forza del destino’ without cuts, which constituted the actual international launch. Since the beginning, my relationship with music has been one of love-hate: at 12 years of age, I started to play the guitar and to sing; at 15, I conducted choral performances; at 17, I began to study composition and conducting; around 19, I devoted myself to singing. Unfortunately, I had the wrong teachers, as often happens, and ended up around 22 with a damaged voice and improper, false technique. I was suffering more than was good for me. I told myself: If singing is like this, it would be better to stop. And that’s what I did, until I was 26. Then I resumed my studies, and this time, I landed with the correct technique. Whether it can be enjoyed or not--but that’s another subject.

 

What does it mean to sing? When does it make you forget everything…….

 

To the contrary, I remember everything. When I’m on stage, it is as if the past and the present were coming together at that very moment: none of my performances is the result of an accident, but rather the result of a lot of experience bundled together. To stand on stage is the happiest time of my life, like when I’m at home among my family. I feel safe, far away from people who can or want to cause me harm.

 

So, you aren’t afraid then? In what frame of mind do you go on stage?

 

I look forward to having people in front of me; I am a kind of caged animal, a shark vis-à-vis blood. When I see the set, when I smell the dust of the stage, I am compelled to enter.

 

When did fame start for you?

 

A clarification: fame is something different from greatness. The secret is to have both, the one and the other, run on parallel tracks. Today more than ever, one can be famous without being great. Thanks to the power of the mass media, the Spice Girls are famous but not great. Every artist ought to be very clear about this difference. The big preoccupation of my life is to really try to make fame and greatness coexist well, that is to say: to deserve the first because it results from the second, which is the real goal and which ought not to be overshadowed by popularity.

 

How do you feel at the end of an opera?

 

Physically exhausted, like a marathon runner after the race, and yet full of energy. It’s like when you make love to the woman you love; you give your utmost, and when you finish, you are exhausted but full of joy.

 

Is it easier to emerge, to be up-and-coming, or to persist, to hold on?

 

I suggest to you a change in wording: is it less difficult to be up-and-coming or to hold on? The answer is: to be up-and-coming, to rise. A plant that has the right soil and sufficient water grows. But, to keep its head up against the wind once it’s big, that’s altogether a different story.

 

What do you see when you close your eyes?

 

It depends on the day. Normally, when I close my eyes, I see my family; I feel this separation to which my job forces me. My wife and my three kids, age 10, 5 and 2, live in Paris. I do manage to see them every week; today I am in a position that allows me to propose certain clauses to the theatres. But it’s dreadful to hear them every day on the telephone and to find out about their progress only across the telephone line. The littlest one is now beginning to talk and that very moment in time, that of his first word, has been lost to me. Just like I will never forgive myself that I wasn’t present at the First Communion of my oldest. It was the day of the dress rehearsal for ‘Otello’ in Turin. He did understand, however…. I close my eyes, and I see moments that are beautiful and those that are unpleasant, ugly. I clearly see the people who wish me well and those who do not, and I don’t understand why. I am someone who does not do harm to his fellow man. I do my job well and some can’t handle it.

 

The first commandment of a tenor is….

 

As a tenor, I don’t have rules; as a man, I do, but they are my own. I try to live my life in the most normal way possible. If it gives me pleasure to go out barefoot in the snow, I do it. Just think, my wife is keeping a video she shot, in which I work with a hoe in our garden seven days from the debut of ‘Otello’. In the rain. She said: “Look, what that crazy guy is doing….No one will believe us.”

 

Which tenor has been revolutionary?

 

Undeniably Ramon Vinay because with a less than beautiful voice he combined the pathos and suffering of pure theater, of the word, of opera made into theater, a far cry from this vain pursuit that is based on the beauty of sound for its own sake and without message. That’s a superficial, empty thing which I detest. It’s like a woman beautifully made up for effect only. If you throw a bucket of water in her face, nothing more remains.

 

Luciano Pavarotti decided not to do the “Aida” in Palermo. What are your thoughts about what the Maestro from Modena is going through?

 

It’s the same circumstance I will be going through 30 years down the road; the same that the predecessors of Luciano went through 60 years ago. After a long career, Pavarotti finds himself with a voice that’s still youthful, of polished sound thanks to a marvelous larynx; inside a body suffering from leg and knee pain and no longer able to stand intense work. It must be hard to be in his position with a body that is not up to par with the freshness of the voice.

 

Your contribution to Argentina, your homeland…..

 

I adore it, but for me the Latin saying “No one is a prophet in his own country” is also valid. Many of my countrymen have not been proud of my success. Nevertheless, something is changing, and I’m happy to open the next season of the Teatro Colón with ‘Otello’.

 

What has Placido Domingo been for you?

 

A great friend; a musician with whom I have worked. There is a false belief going around that he is my “godfather”; that I sing thanks to him. But that is not true. I met him in ’94, when I won the Domingo competition. At that time, I already had two years of an international career under my belt. I saw him again in ’96, on the occasion of an opera which he conducted and I sang in; then we made a CD together. Stop. We might both be speaking Spanish, might both be facing a similar repertoire, but journalists at times construct distorted images: I have also worked well with Muti and with Abbado. Are all these my “godfathers”? You know what a disaster…..

 

If I told you that your voice is vaguely reminiscent of Mario del Monaco, how would you respond to that?

 

One does not question the great Mario, but I can say with all due respect that I have this wild way of “biting into the sound” that he had and that had not been heard any more for about 30 years. Some appreciate this quality of mine; others say that I am old-fashioned; still others maintain that finally someone has come out who sings the way they used to once upon a time.

 

What do critics mean to you?

 

A stimulus, if they are constructive. I do not like to put up with those that aim only to destroy. And I would have something to tell about them……

 

Which operas do you prefer? How do you select your characters?

 

From the libretto. I like dramatic coherence in characters. The roles, which I perform, represent human beings who suffer, who laugh and cry: for this reason, I love ‘Otello’, ‘Samson’ or ‘Tosca’, where the words are not put there solely in service to the music. Then there are operas like ‘La forza del destino’ or ‘Trovatore’, which don’t fit these characteristics, but they are such marvelous music that they are going to be sung just the same.

 

Your next professional challenge, what is it going to be?

 

Palermo is not a challenge from the point of view of Radamès, the character I am going to portray, because I have done this role in Tokyo recently. At the Massimo, the challenge consists above all in replacing Pavarotti. I understand that, because of his worth as an artist and because of national pride, you guys would have liked to have Luciano. Well, I want to be worthy of the trust, confidence and affection which the authorities and the public have shown me. To me it’s a big responsibility and an honor—a personal rather than professional honor--to participate at the most important fin de siecle reopening of an Italian theater. This is the message I am sending to the people of Palermo. In a few months, “Manon” is going to await me at LaScala. Another difficult engagement, no doubt about it.

 

Which theater puts the most chills on you, makes you shudder the most?

 

Not a one. For me, theaters are places of joy and delight where my ‘joie de vivre’ comes out. It is the performing of the masterpieces that gives me the chills. God has given me the opportunity to be on stage, enjoying what I’m doing and even earning a living. There I forget the unpleasant things that are around us when the curtain falls.

 

Do you believe that you are at the peak of your career?

 

Absolutely not.

 

Where do you want to get to?

 

If I were already at my best, I would be dead. There is an Argentinean saying with respect to a famous tango singer that goes: he sings better every day. And yet, he’s been dead, gone to a better life, for nearly seventy years.

 

Prowling Colossus Straddles the World

 Independent

22 Feb 1998

Brighid McLauglin

 Brighid McLaughlin is glad to find her ‘special friend’, operatic tenor José Cura, unspoiled by fame

“It won’t take us long to get to Paris, you know I have a sixth sense,” said opera impresario Barra O Tuama. “Don’t worry. I’m grand.” I replied in a tone of voice that implied I was anything but.

We were on a bus from Beauvais airport, 70km north of Paris, on our way to meet the world’s greatest tenor, José Cura. Normally Barra could organize two flies going up a wall: this time I wasn’t so sure. Paris seemed hours away.

For the next hour I sat trapped between Barra and gentleman Declan Hassett of the Examiner as the coach weaved through the flat, fog-covered landscape impaled with pylons.

Suddenly O Tuama started singing vigorously, his face taking on a pink tinge, his eyes swimming with emotion. It was ‘Happy Moments’ from Maritana. Emboldened by Barra’s efforts, Declan joined in. Yes, spirits were high.

As they sang, I thought of José. It was Barra who had introduced me to him three years ago in Turin and I’ve been grateful to him ever since.

I’ll never forget meeting José: he is one of the most remarkable people I have ever encountered. With his huge stature and brown eyes, he looks like a Greek god and often seems as omniscient as one.

Apart from being the world’s greatest tenor, bringing passion and sexuality to opera on a grand scale, he is an actor, conductor, gardener, photographer and body-builder, and holds a black belt in Kung Fu.

Born on December 5, 1962, in Santa Fe, Argentina, he was schooled by the Christian Brothers and fed a diet of Irish black pudding. He studied first as a guitarist under Juan di Maestro. At 15 he debuted as a choral conductor, and at 16 he started studying composition with Carlos Castrop and piano with Zulma Cabrera.

In 1982, having entered the School of Arts of the National University of Rosario, he was persuaded to learn the vocal technique by the choirmaster there. His first major influence was Horaciuo Amaun, who laid the foundations for Cura’s singing technique in 1988.

Since 1992, Vittorio Terranova has been his teacher.

José has performed in every major opera house in the world, his unique voice and earthy brand of humour delighting everyone he meets. He has just finished working on a disc of Argentinian songs to be released by Erato later this year. The reviews of his Puccini Arias conducted by Placido Domingo have been superb and the disc has gone to the top of the charts. His voice scales the greatest heights of emotion.

Yes, José is a special friend. A tall, powerful young man with dark black hair and taut eyebrows, who stares with intense concentration before suddenly bursting into laughter. Meeting him is always a special occasion for me.

I hadn’t seen him for quite a while and, since our last meeting in Dublin’s Trocadero, he had become a hero of opera, straddling the world stages like a prowling Colossus.

In the meantime, we arrived in central Paris and it was time to eat. Outside the Brasserie European on Rue de Diderot, fish caught before dawn lay in mountainous display, gleaming silver. Inside, the talk was of José.

“He’s the best,” said Barra, spreading out his hands expansively. “The best in the world. I made my way to Covent Garden to hear him sing. I never heard a voice like it in the flesh. I thought it was the medication that I was on,” said Barra, tucking into a rum baba fiery with liquor.

“He is now considered by international critics to be sitting on top of the world on his own. His schedule is hectic. This year he’ll be in Sydney, Dublin and Tokyo. It must be the Clonakilty pudding I brought him that is giving him the energy!”

That night I devoured a book on Puccini page by page, until - to my disappointment - I had reached the end.

In the morning, I walked to the offices of Erato on Rue de Tournelles just off the Bastille. On that bright and beautiful morning, Paris seemed deserted. In comparison, the Erato office was a bustle of activity. An English journalist sipped tea: Ronan, the Breton receptionist, shuffled through piles of paper; Barra wandered around in a dedicated but aimless way: there was lots of chatter and laughter.

Declan was interviewing José upstairs. I awaited my turn. Suddenly there was a great sound of scuffling and José appeared. Although I had ceased to marvel at his height, I was again aware of it. He grabbed me by the waist and beamed. “You crazy woman.” Then he fixed me with laughing eyes and we went upstairs.

“All this fame, will it change you?” I laughed. José gently shook his head. “I am who I am Brighid. I am where I am, but everyone behind me is also part of the big machine. I give the same amount of attention to every small human being because that is my nature and I cannot make human difference.

“Somebody called God decided to give me all these gifts, it is my obligation to use them. It is just a way of earning my life. It is not my life. My profession has plenty of pressure but I know that it is not my life. If everything finished tomorrow I wouldn’t die.”

Like Puccini, José is a down-to-earth person, a real flesh man. “I feel close to Puccini the man. He was someone who knew that his job was just his job and nothing else. In the middle of a composition, he’d go into the middle of a lake to feel the water. I’ve been there. I performed there.”

At the back of his mind other fires are smoldering. We talk of life, the changes that have happened to us both, the way the human soul survives and God. José has not lost touch with the real things in life. He is the best kind of man: humble, flamboyant, earnest, born with a steely spirit and a soft soul.

“I believe in God the way I know you believe in God. I have a Catholic principle but I am no longer Catholic administrated. I had a good Christian education but it was not fanatical.” José says.

He joins his hands and talks of the new recoding of Argentinian songs. “The Argentinian songs are very important to me. This album is absolutely different from everything in the market. I do all the orchestral arrangements. The music is wonderful. Each single piece is a pearl in itself. It is a disc that will hopefully liaise with the pop market.”

As he talks of his garden, his photographs, you can see he has a generous, independent spirit. There are things in his life besides opera.

“My new hobby is photography. I love to do carpentry, to try everything. I love life and people. One thing I discovered this year is a new book called Flying Instructions for Eagles and Chickens by Antony de Mello. It is a final objective vision of spirituality. One man thinking in a loud voice and writing what he thinks and feels. He asks is it necessary to ask forgiveness of God every time a mistake is made? God is omnipresent. Every time you make a mistake, he has forgiven you already. There is no rancor in God. That gives you such enormous relief.”

I cannot explain in simple words the astonishing character of this man. You must see for yourself. On March 14, José will be joined in the RDS Main Hall by the National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Alexander Anissimov and a combined choir of 200 for an “Opera Extravaganza”. A night not to be missed.

“Don’t forget,” said Barra o Tuama, as we left Rue de Tournelles, “instead of signing autographs after the performance in Dublin, José will be signing autographs in HMV on Grafton Street the following day from 12:30 to 2. As for me, I’ll sign autographs in Heaven - after all, I’m not asked to sign them on earth!”

Then he burst into a song by William Wallace, the 19^th-century Irish composer. The words were apt. “In happy moments day by day, the sands of life may pass. In swift but tranquil tides away on this unerring past, brighter eyes will beam and smile, remembrance will recall the pure and unfaded beam that is dearer than them all, is dearer than them all.”

Yes. José is remarkable. Three years later, I am still of the same opinion. The morning is already far off in the past, yet I’ll always think of José walking magnificently erect through the streets of Paris, shoulders thrown back, chest out, his smile broad, somewhat protective, as he submits to this testing world again.

 

A Tenor from Argentina

 H. Canning

Gramophone

August 1998

José Cura is a tenor for whom everyone is predicting great things.  Perceived as one of the heirs apparent to those three, he has already earned the respect of conductors and singing colleagues as much for his level-headed professionalism as for his voice.  Heavily booked for the next five years, he talks about what the future holds....

It must be unnerving for a young singer to make a role debut at La Scala, Milan, in an opera as demanding for the tenor as Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, but when we met in Warner’s Milan Office two days before the opening might, José Cura was looking casual – bright pink polo shirt, yellow chinos – and relaxed, but far from complacent.  The Scala audience is notoriously critical – remember the boos for a single cracked note when Pavarotti sang Don Carlo for the first time in 1994? – and, indeed, on his debut at Italy’s most prestigious house, as Enzo in Ponchielli’s now rarely staged La Gioconda, Cura was harshly received by a vocal minority, so he’s a little nervous.

“This is the most dangerous appointment of my career,” he says, but then he jokes, “I’ve already bought my nappies!”  Word had been circulating in Milan prior to the Manon Lescaut prima that Cura was in for another dose of the bird at curtain down – what open minds the public in Milan must have – and sure enough, he, along with his soprano colleague, Maria Guleghina and the maestro, La Scala’s artistic director, Riccardo Muti, was booed by strategically placed protesters, although in Cura’s case they were eventually drowned out by the counter-demonstrators’ “Bravi!”

And truth to tell, it is hard to understand what the booers were complaining about.  The role of Des Grieux is the most lengthy and perhaps most demanding of Puccini’s lyric tenor roles – “five songs and a big duet” he reminds me; “After Manon Lescaut, every opera is a lullaby for the tenor!  It’s tough” – and his dark, dramatic lirico-spinto, a little reminiscent of Franco Corelli’s without the clarion tip, seemed better suited to the part than any other tenor of his generation and he looked marvelous, convincingly adolescent as he flirted “Tra voi belle” (“Among you lovely girls”) in Act I, but rapidly growing in maturity after the lightning stroke of seeing Manon Lescaut (“Donna non vidi mai simile a questa” – “I never saw a woman quite like this”) for the first time.  It’s a hugely promising debut and any major opera house planning a new production of the Puccini opera will be thankful that such a vital and handsome new interpreter of Des Grieux has finally emerged.

Indeed, apart from Domingo – who sang the role from the late-1970s to the mid-1980s – it is hard to imagine a better singer for the role today, even if Cura is not always the stylistic paragon that Domingo was in his prime.  His glottal ‘sobs’ and long held high notes recall an earlier, less musically scrupulous generation, but they are all part of the Cura package: the chunky good looks, the passionate temperament, the powerful baritonal tenore robusto and – dare one say? – the occasionally wild vocalism.  Yet, despite the counter-claims of Roberto Alagna – who is almost of an age with Cura, now 35 – the Argentinian tenor looks set to fill the shoes of the three famous tenors whose careers are beginning to enter their sunset phase, at least as far as the important opera houses and the world’s most influential opera conductors are concerned.

In Pavarotti’s case, this is literally true: earlier this year the great Luciano had been scheduled to sing Radames in the production of Aida which inaugurated the reopened Teatro Massimo in Palermo, but Pavarotti’s recent health problems forced him to cancel and Cura stepped into the fray.  With his burgeoning career, I remarked, it was amazing he was free.

“Well, I wasn’t, really,” he says, “I was supposed to be singing La Forza Del Destino in Marseille and it was my oldest contract, signed back in 1994, so I had to go.  When a theatre believes in you like that – four years ago when I was at the beginning of my career – you can’t let them down.  So I went to Marseille, also because the audience is wonderful – they are the football hooligans of opera, that kind of passion, tremendous applause.”

So Cura honoured his contract with a 20-day rehearsal period – “too much for one opera” he adds, I think, jokingly – and when Palermo called about the Pavarotti problemo, he told them they would have to square it with Marseille.  Happily the French opera house agreed – it was, after all, a special occasion, the first opera in Palermo for a quarter of a century – and Cura triumphed in the Sicilian capital.  “You have to see the Teatro Massimo,” he enthuses; “My international career is not that old but I’ve already seen a lot of theatres and I think it’s the most beautiful – acoustics, everything.”

For Cura the timing of the Aida performances could not have been more propitious because he had only just done his first Radames in Japan last February.  “It was a great coincidence, because it wouldn’t have been intelligent to sing Radames for the first time in that situation – with TV, radio and national and international media attention focused on the Massimo re-opening.  But I’d already done it in Tokyo and I think it was good.  The role suits my voice.  Dramatically it’s a bit static, but you can find very interesting things in the Third and Fourth Acts.”

Cura’s frankness and modest self-assessment – possibly laid on a bit thick for our interview – have unquestionably contributed to his current high standing among professionals.  His decision to honour his Marseille contract suggests a degree of integrity notably lacking in the opera world today when many star singers will threaten to withdraw from engagements if a better offer hoves into view or if they think they can bargain for a higher fee.

But Cura evidently has the respect of the leading Italian maestros.  I recall a meeting with Daniele Gatti, then newly appointed chief conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, two years ago, when I asked him who he would cast as Des Grieux if he were to mount Manon Lescaut (his appointment as music director of the Bologna Opera had just been announced) and he replied, without hesitating: “Cura, no one else!” Muti evidently concurred for what was to be his first Puccini opera in any theatre – he has recorded Tosca (Philips), based on concerts in Philadelphia – and Riccardo Chailly has important recording plans for the young Argentinian.  I vividly remember their thrilling concert performance of Pagliacci at the Royal Concertgebouw’s traditional Christmas Day concert in 1996 – telecast live to most of Europe, though not, wouldn’t you know it, to the UK – and it is good news that Decca are planning a recording with this partnership in the near future.  Anyone contemplating Otello recording would probably do well to get into Cura’s good books, for his debut in the title-role last year at the Teatro Regio, Turin –with Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic, no less – was extravagantly praised by the Italian press:  “Un nuovo Otello” was typical of the headlines.  And when I wonder whether 34 is perhaps too tender an age to tackle your first Otello, Cura replies that Domingo first sang it as 35 and has remained pre-eminent in the part for another 25 years.  Cura will sing Verdi’s hero in a new Covent Garden production in 2001, if there is a Covent Garden, of course, by that time.  Meanwhile, the role goes under wraps for a season or two.  Cura is certainly a shrewd man.  He knows he has time on his side and if he makes judicious role and career choices, he will be without rival in the big, dramatic Italianate tenor parts in the first decade of the new millennium.  His repertoire already extends to some 30 operas, some of them – such as Paolo il Bello in Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini (“Not very interesting music” he opines) – already abandoned and others which might not survive much longer: he tells me he still has a few contracts for Loris in Giordano’s Fedora (which he has recorded live with Katia Ricciarelli in the title-part) but he’s not enthusiastic: “Everyone seems to like it, I don’t know why, you give me a reason.”  I can’t, other than the cliché that there’s no accounting for taste. 

Nor is Cura likely to take the tenor lead in Verdi’s Nabucco, Ismaele, after performances at the Opera-Bastille two seasons ago, although he did help the Royal Opera out when their Ismaele fell ill in 1996 – “even in that stupid production,” he adds.

For the future he’s already heavily booked for the next five years.  After concert performances of Bizet’s Carmen with Olga Borodina and the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Colin Davis in July – and a recording of Saint-Saens’s Samson et Dalila with the same forces for Erato – he is having what he calls his “deserved” summer holiday in August, a time for re-grouping with his family, his wife and three young children, whom he gets to see less than he would like to at their home outside Paris.

Before that there is a concert tour of Germany, to promote his new Erato album of songs from Argentina, the long-awaited follow-up to his popular – and artistically successful – Puccini arias disc conducted by Domingo (11-97).  “It’s the music of my country.  Not many people know the music of Argentina and they think it’s not interesting or that it’s quite limited.  We have included one piece by Piazzolla, a piano arrangement of his best-known work, a bit hit at home, and when you hear the melody you will remember the song.  It’s very good music, a sort of tango-back by an extremely accomplished composer.  We’ve also done one of the early songs of Alberto Ginastera – Argentina’s most famous avant-garde composer – which is very melodic.”  Cura has also included some songs by Guastavino in his own arrangements for chamber orchestra.  Before he became a star singer, he reminds me, he was a choral conductor and composer, a rare musical pedigree for a tenor.

But Cura is self-evidently an uncommonly intelligent and musically literate man, as his views on his newest role amply demonstrate.  “The tessitura [of Des Grieux’s music] is that of a lyric tenor, of a Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto if you like, but the orchestration is very heavy, especially now with the orchestras we have and when the diapason is 444 or something like that and the sound is very bright and muscular.  So you have an opera written for the tenor of La Boheme with the orchestration of Die Walkure.  Manon Lescaut was written in the ‘Wagnerian’ period of Puccini.  After that he wrote much shorter parts.  This is the only Puccini opera in which the tenor sings for an hour or more.  So for Manon Lescaut, you need a voice and a technique, but you also need guts.”  A lot of tenors, he points out – no names but seasoned Puccinians will know who they are – didn’t have the guts to sing Des Grieux on stage.  It would be nice if one of the record companies – and they all seem to want a slice of the action, lining up to record Cura in complete operas – will have the stomach to enshrine his Des Grieux on disc.  Finding a Manon Lescaut to match him, of course, will be more of a problem.

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