Argentinean Heart

La Nueva Provincia Interview (May 12, 2005)

Tenor José Cura's Heart Remains in Argentina

Translated by Monica B

Berlin (EFE)-Tenor and conductor José Cura assured EFE in an interview today that even though he resides in Spain, and has not stepped on home soil since “Otello” at the Teatro Colón in 1999, his heart is in Argentina, and with the Argentinean people.

“Aurora, my latest CD of arias, was dedicated to all Argentineans, and I even put the blue and white flag on the inside. But the people there don’t know that, because it never made it to the domestic market for lack of a distributor,” the tenor, who is performing at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin these days, stated.

Cura gave his debut in the German capital on April 27 as Canio in the premiere of a “Pagliacci” production directed by David Pountney (Great Britain), who was ostensibly booed by the audience.

“My expression at the curtain call after the performance was perhaps serious, but that was nothing personal, for my performance was applauded. It’s that I can’t bear soccer field reactions in a theater,” explained the tenor, who avoided drawing parallels to the trouble he was involved in five years ago at the Teatro Real in Madrid.

“If the members of the audience want to show their displeasure, the most polite and also perhaps the most effective way would be absolute silence. No one can imagine how painfully distressing coming out to take one’s bows after a performance and not getting any reaction from the audience would be—and how effective,” he pointed out.

Pountney endured the barrage stoically, “possibly because he is British, and digested it later at home. I am Latin (in temperament) and it’s already known…” Cura added, in reference-the last of the entire interview-to his confrontation with a segment of the audience at the Teatro Real.

At last, Berlin

Cura, who will return to the Deutsche Oper next year as Dick Johnson—the thief who is redeemed by the love of Minnie, the main character of Giacomo Puccini’s ‘Fanciulla del West’—was the only one of the great Latin-American tenors who had not yet made his debut in Berlin.

During the last year, the Mexicans Ramón Vargas and Rolando Villazón, the Peruvian Juan Diego Flórez and the Argentine Dario Volonté, whose names make you think of Latin America as a ‘quarry’, came this way.

“There are great voices in Latin America, and Argentina, for example, is in the count with excellent contraltos. But I find it strange that in Europe they are surprised to learn about this so-called ‘boom’,” Cura confessed. For him the explanation is much simpler: “It’s socio-economic”.

“The same phenomenon that can be seen in Russia is occurring in Latin America. It’s that young people with a natural inclination (toward the arts) are willing to invest ten years of their lives in a project which, just maybe, will turn out well for them. In the rich countries, they have everything; there is less of a willingness to make this investment in terms of one’s life. Four years in front of a computer and you are an engineer,” he opines.

Motivated by necessity

For Cura, the secret is: “the driving force that dire need—having sung ‘for four rubles’ in theaters or in the street, something that I have done myself—turns into. There has to be this feeling, a rage of despair, that’s eating at your insides; it pushes you to cross the Atlantic.” Cura still has that, although in a way that’s calmed down a lot.

“Until I created my own company in 2000, I had a lot of people feeding off of me. Today, I am in charge of my own calendar, I am my own boss. Before, I had 100 performances per year; now, I sing 50.”

“In the time that remains, I compose, conduct, attend to company business and spend time with my family,” added the tenor, who has a “closed” calendar that has him booked out until 2009, although with some blank spaces for events of relevance like, for example, the Festival in Verona.

“That explains why I have still not returned to the Teatro Colón; because I am closing the calendar with a number of way-in-advance bookings, and for financial reasons, the Colón only draws up plans for the short or medium term,” he pointed out.

In Berlin, Cura has not met up with Maestro Daniel Barenboim, another Argentine who is especially close to the Colón. He is the General Music Director of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, “a man of supernatural genius,” said the tenor.

“Barenboim is unique,” the singer, who has not yet worked with the Maestro even though they do see each other occasionally, emphasized.

“Once, I mentioned to him that I wasn’t managing to get my CD sold in Argentina. And he replied: ‘Don’t worry; my CD of tangos doesn’t sell either,’” the tenor, who is preparing ‘a surprise’ for his public, related by way of anecdote. He gave as clues: expanding his repertoire to characters without ‘pesto and mozzarella’ and works that would be more nourishing to the intellect, although under no circumstances Wagner.

“I would not sing Wagner in a language that I do not have a good command of. Besides, it’s schmaltzy; the preludio of ‘Tristan and Isolde’ has possibilities for a Latin American soap opera,” he pointed out.

The surprise could also be an experience as a ‘theater performer’. “They’ve been tempting me for several years, and I’m taking on one of these,” he forewarned.