Hugh Canning talks to a carefree Jose Carreras as the tenor prepares to sing the lead in Verdi's Stiffelio at Covent Garden.

Jose Carreras looks a picture of health as he walks through the backstage corridors of the Royal Opera House, smiling and relaxed. He is rehearsing a new production of Verdi's Stiffelio -opening tomorrow night at Covent Garden- and, as with all tenor superstars, time is short. But he takes the trouble to chat with the wardrobe mistress on our way to his dressing room. That, apparently, is typical Carreras : no armies of hangers-on and minders, no security men keeping the fans at bay.

It is almost six years since, during the filming of La Boheme, he fell hill and was diagnosed as suffering from leukaemia, with a slim chance of survival. You would never know it. True, he looks a little older than his 46 years. Chemotherapy has left a few wrinkles on his face, and his black hair is speckled with grey. He looks paler, too, than the average Mediterranean. But he has lost the gaunt aspect he presented when he last sang at the ROH as Samson two years ago.

His figure has filled out, and he is still a handsome man with dark and penetrating, laughing eyes. Emerging from four years of intensive hospital treatment, he told his friends and colleagues that he would be taking things easy; but now, it seems, he has taken on a new lease of life.

"I feel so good, physically, and I think my voice is responding, more and more every day, to what I ask her to do. I am singing opera again in the places where I love to sing : Covent Garden is one of them, for sure, with La Scala, Vienna and my home town, Barcelona, for obvious reasons".

He is particulary happy to be singing the tittle role of Stiffelio. Fourteen years ago, in Vienna, he recorded the role in Philips's pioneering series of the neglected early Verdi operas, but this is the first time he will have tackled the part in the theatre. "I prepared myself well for the recording, but singing on stage, let's face it, is not the same. In a recording studio you work for 12 days or two weeks, but you might start with the last act, and it's very difficult to get the right idea and the right dimension of the opera -to build the character- in a recording. Here, it's much better for me. By the first night I will have been rehearsing here for three weeks, and that gives me the opportunity to really get deep into the role and to learn what are the difficult passages for the voice."

Stiffelio is perhaps the most underrated of Verdi's so-called mid-period operas, first performed in 1850 (immediately before Rigoletto). It concerns the adultery of Lina, wife of the Austrian Protestant minister, Stiffelius, the leader of an Ahasuerean sect, and his public forgiveness of her, emulating Christ's treatment of the adulteress, at the climatic scene in church. In 1850, its subject was modern and controversial -precisely the reason for Verdi's interest in it- and it inevitably fell foul of the Italian censors. The composer, frustrated with imposed changes which made nonsense of the drama, revised it thoroughly as Aroldo, the Anglo-Saxon King Harold of England. No trouble with the censors there. Only since the late 1960s, when Verdi's original intentions and the offending libretto were restored, has Stiffelio emerged as one of the most interesting of his pre-Rigoletto operas.

"It's a fascinating part. This is a man adored by the community in which he lives, he is almost God on earth to them, and so he has an incredible moral authority. But at the same time he is facing personal, human problems which have nothing to do with his religion. At certain dramatic points you can compare him with Othello, but Othello is a soldier and a fighter and Stiffelio is a priest, a mystic. He belongs to a completely different world with completely different beliefs."

His return to the stage in a new production with three weeks of rehearsal has confounded those who believed that Carreras would never be able to resume the kind of schedule he undertook before his illness. He is certainly more selective nowadays, but his stage appearance have been increasing steadily in the past few years : Canio in Pagliacci, Don Jose in Carmen, Alfredo in La Traviata at the Vienna State Opera, Don Jose again in Seville for last years's Expo celebrations.

Carreras's comeback has been a surprise in more than one sense, because it is clear he still intends to tackle some of the big, dramatic tenor roles. He was criticised earlier in his career, for example, when he sang Don Carlos and Radames in Aida for Von Karajan at the Salzburg Festival. "Well, that was 14 years ago and I am older now. I don't think Don carlos was ever a wrong choice for me (he made a famous appearance in the role at Covent Garden in 1977). Aida is an opera I did with Karajan, for obvious reasons : he wanted me and I absolutely wanted to do with him. If you ask me what kind of singer I am, I say, "I am a tenor", basically a lyric voice, good for the operas where a certain kind of expressiveness is required."

Like many singers, Carreras refuses to be pigeon-holed. He believes, he says, in knowing his own limitations, but he trusts his instinct and his talent. He points out that in 1975 he sang Nemorino, the light tenor hero of Donizetti's comic L'elisir d'amore, but two years later he was singing the much more dramatic tenor role in La Forza del destino. "many people told me that it was by far the best thing I ever did. So who do I believe? In the end, I have to believe myself. I made mistakes in the past and I probably will still make them. Wonderful! If you make mistakes, you learn."

I wondered rhetorically, whether he regarded his involvement with "popular" concerts as one of his mistakes. Hadn't they become something a circus, I asked?

"I wouldn't use that word. I would call it entertainment. I think opera has become much more popular with the general public in the past 20 years than ever before. There are a few artists in the world for whom the demand for tickets is perhaps 20 times the capacity of a conventional hall. Therefore, we say, let's do it on a large scale. What's the problem ? The disadvantages are that you are not hearing the voice as you would in an opera house or concert hall because of amplification -even though, today, we have wonderful sound systems- but the advantages are enormous. People know arenas are not the most appealing or beautiful venues but they give the opportunity for a much wider social group to get closer to a certain kind of music. You can consider it entertainment, but you can hope that they come closer to the "real thing". We all hope that".

But isn't there the risk. I ask, that these "macro-concerts" raise expectations of artists to the point where they become victims of their own success and celebrity? Look what happened to Pavarotti at La Scala and his recent Dusseldorf concert.

"Look, Luciano has been not only an artistic but a social phenomenom. For the media, it's big news when he does something wrong. I heard some of the broadcast of Don Carlos and I thought, my God, his voice sounds fresher than ever and he was in glorious form, you shouldn't judge a performance on a single cracked note. And now in Germany it happened again, but maybe he didn't have a very good evening. It happens to everyone. Who was the greatest footballer in the world ? Pele ? Bobby Charlton ? Beckenbauer ? Cruyff ? They missed a lot of penalties, but that didn't mean the end of their career !"

In the super-tenors stakes, Carreras has become something of a piggy-in-the-middle. He gets on well with both Pavarotti and Domingo and has no time for the rivalry which seems to consume so much of those singer's time and artistic energy. It does not worry him, he says, if he is perceived as the third of the three tenors.

"Well, look, it is the audience who decides ! If, 23 years ago, when I sang the little role of Flavio to Montserrat Caballe's Norma in Barcelona, somebody had hold me that I would be in this position now, that I would have the opportunity to work with the most wonderful conductors, the most wonderful stage directors and the most wonderful colleagues, in all the world's great opera houses, to make more than 100 recordings, I would never have believed him. So I consider myself a privileged person and, in the past five years, even more so. I am happy to be where I am, so who is Number 1, Number 2, Number 7 ? What do I care ? I am happy and fulfilled as a man and an artist."

Copyright © 1993 The Sunday Times