Q--Did you first become interested in music as a child?

A--I had a rather happy childhood. There was one very revealing moment I particularly remember. I was only four when my family left Barcelona--where, by the way, I was born on 5 December 1946--and emigrated to Argentina. Times had become very hard in Barcelona, which was still suffering from the after-effects of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. For political and financial reasons, my parents had decided to try their luck on the other side of the Atlantic. But they were soon disappointed, and we came back to Spain after a year.

But what I chiefly remember about our expedition was the crossing. I had a great time on the boat and, I think, amused the other passengers with my imitations of tango singers and dancers.

Q--Were you just having fun, or do you think it was already a sign that you had a vocation for music? How did you become a singer?

A--Through a whole chain of circumstances, of course, and not because of some sudden inspiration. Like all other five- or six-year-old boys in Catalonia, I dreamed of playing football and scoring more goals than anyone else. I also wanted to spend as much time as possible in the cinema. In those days there wasn't much else to do in one's spare time. We had a season ticket to the cinema and would sometimes sit through two showings in succession.

I enjoyed taking off a very popular singer called Luis Mariano. But what really encouraged me most to take up singing was the film The Great Caruso, with Mario Lanza in the title role. The day after I saw the film I

Started imitating Mario Lanza, and I noticed I was able to reproduce almost all the arias in The Great Caruso, which I'd never heard before, with startling accuracy. My parents weren't exactly great opera-lovers, but they were so impressed they started wondering whether my love of music was not after all a sign that I really had a vocation. They gave me a record player and records of The Great Caruso and Neapolitan songs sung by Giuseppe di Stefano. I was absolutely thrilled.

I was eight when my father enrolled me at the Barcelona Conservatory and took me for the first time to a performance of Verdi's Aida at the Teatro del Liceo in Barcelona. It was pure magic! Attending a live performance of an opera, with all the singers, the orchestra, the sets, the atmosphere and all the rest, was a decisive experience for me. Three years later, when I was eleven, I got a chance to appear on the stage of the great Teatro del Liceo when I played a child in Manuel de Falla's El Retablo de Maese Pedro. It was a difficult part to sing as it was written for soprano.

After this promising debut, my parents began to take serious advice on whether or not I should embark on a singing career. They made such a fuss over me that the pianist and conductor José Iturbi thought it wise to dampen their enthusiasm a bit by pointing out that they would have to wait until my voice broke before coming to any decision. In the meantime, I was encouraged to specialize in science and began to study chemistry. But I found it pretty hard going. All I could think of was singing. In the end, on the occasion of my twenty-first birthday during the 1967-1968 academic year, I finally decided to take up the career that was clearly closest to my heart.

Shortly afterwards I made the acquaintance of someone who was to become one of my closest friends, Montserrat Caballe. She had great confidence in me from the very start. She arranged for me to sing with her at the Teatro del Liceo in 1970. It was there too that I played Gennaro in Gaetano Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia. After that, I was asked to appear at all the world's great opera-houses.

Q--What does music mean to you?

A--It's first and foremost my profession, which is in itself important to me. But above all it is the only channel through which I can express some of my deeper emotions. Although I'm someone who tends to keep himself to himself, when I sing I discover private feelings within me which I try to communicate to the audience.

Singing is all about communicating. That's why technique is important. The better your technique, the more likely you are to be able to communicate. But that's not enough. A singer must also be able, through technique, to inject life and substance into music, to give it a soul. Technique and a fine voice can never suffice on their own.

That's why I think the "perfection" of a recording, obtained after a lot of technical tinkering, can never surpass a live performance, for all its inevitable imperfections. As I've often said, when you're a tenor you must start singing in the heart, move up to the head, then let it out through the voice. Your heart, which wants to express a number of emotions, is the point of departure. But it wouldn't serve much purpose unless your head took charge and warned you not to overdo it or, on the contrary, to let rip a bit more. It is by that subtly circuitous route that the voice, working hand in hand with technique, can genuinely express the emotions of the heart while at the same time obeying the instructions of the mind.

Q--Is opera the only kind of singing you like? What do you think of flamenco, for example, a popular art based on cante jondo, or "deep song," which seems outlandish to some and is a delight to others?

A--When well performed, cante jondo is an extraordinarily sensitive, sophisticated and expressive form of singing, especially when the emotional charge is such that the singer, just as he seems to have given his all and is on the point of collapse, somehow manages to summon up enough strength to lend his final burst of song a timbre so personal it becomes unique.

I'm a great fan of cante jondo, and by that I mean genuine cante jondo. What I can't stand, however, is the watered-down version that is so often served up to us.

Q--Do you also appreciate other types of music, like jazz or rock?

A--Please don't imagine that professional classical musicians, and especially those who work in opera, spend all their time listening only to Wagner or Verdi. I love classical music, I love symphonic music, but I also love pop, rock and other types of music--it all depends on what mood I'm in.

I like pop music when it's well performed. And sometimes I really adore it. Take the Beatles, for example. They first began to be widely played when I was still in my teens. They left a deep impression on my generation. I still regard them as great musicians. When it's good, their kind of music is something that I respond to with intensity.

Q--When it comes down to it, then, the only distinction you make is between good music and bad music.

A--Absolutely. While we're on the subject, let me anticipate a question I'm often asked--whether operatic tenors should sing so-called popular music or not. I think they should, first because I like listening to that kind of music and singing it, and then because it may also be a way of attracting a new audience to opera.

Q--I was about to ask you what you think about the charge of elitism that is often levelled at opera and classical music in general.

A--It's true they are often accused of being elitist. In the old days that kind of accusation might have seemed justified. But times have changed. Nowadays, classical music and opera are appreciated by an ever-wider public from an increasingly broad social background. That is partly due to the performers themselves, who are much less likely to behave like prima donnas nowadays. But the main reason for the change is the influence of the audiovisual media, which have enabled hundreds of thousands of people to get to know and enjoy this kind of music. Like any other form of artistic expression, music needs an audience. It can only be decoded and become accessible if it reaches the public--you can't love anything until you know it.

Q--How would you relate music to other arts like painting, sculpture and literature?

A--Music has one specific characteristic, which has both advantages and drawbacks, but which makes it livelier than many other forms of artistic expression: it is produced instantaneously. That means that in certain circumstances it has an extra emotive force and a quite extraordinary expressive power. Having said that, I should add that I also adore literature.

Q--Do you think that a painting, say, can inspire a range of emotions, from the deepest gloom to the wildest euphoria, as powerfully as music?

A--It's not impossible. But it's literature, of course, that comes closest to music in this respect. After all, opera is a marriage of words and music.

Q--If you were marooned on a desert island and could take only one work by each great composer with you, which ones would you choose?

A--What an agonizing choice that would be! I would definitely take Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and Bellini's Norma with me. I couldn't do without Rossini's The Barber of Seville or Donizetti's The Elixir of Love. I'd also take Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, Bizet's Carmen and Puccini's La Boheme. As for Verdi, how could one possibly choose between Rigoletto, La Traviata and Il Trovatore?

Q--Which are your favourite operatic roles?

A--Rodolfo in La Boheme and Don José in Carmen are two of my favourites. I also like Nemorino in The Elixir of Love.

Q--Do you still ever get first-night nerves?

A--I don't know whether what I feel is really nerves. All I do know is that on the day of a big premiere I start giving myself a check-up the moment I wake up. I examine my instrument, that is to say my voice. I try to reassure myself that all is well, physically and psychologically, and that my voice is responding properly to the instructions it is getting from my brain. Why does one have nerves like that? Perhaps because if you're a member of the chorus, a small mistake can go unnoticed, whereas a single muffed note by a tenor can be of momentous importance.

Q--People often say that opera is going through a crisis. Do you agree?

A--It seems always to have been the case--but this is a very controversial subject. I myself see a crisis looming on the horizon because there isn't enough young blood at the moment to keep the complex structure of opera firmly on its feet. This shortage of talent has attained alarming proportions. Unless a new generation emerges soon, opera is in danger of going into terminal decline.

Q--You're a man of great curiosity and a wide range of interests. Is there another field in which you would have liked to excel?

A--When I was very small, as I told you, I was mad about soccer. Like countless other Spanish boys, I dreamt of playing centre forward for Spain, or for Barcelona. But I think it would be going too far to talk of frustration. If I hadn't gone in for singing and classical music, I'd certainly have chosen some other activity to do with art.

Q--Does your professional work leave you time to devote yourself to your other activities?

A--I try not to perform more than two or three times a week. I strive to reconcile my professional life with my private life. It's not always easy, especially now that I have a third activity on top of all my other commitments--the foundation which bears my name, and whose purpose is to fight leukaemia.

Q--What gave you the idea of setting up the José Carreras Foundation?

A--I got the idea of setting up the Foundation after my personal experience of leukaemia. As you may know, I was ill for almost a year. During that time, the great support and encouragement I got from lots of people helped me fight and, eventually, beat the disease. It was then that I discovered that the tenors usually described as my rivals, Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo, were not just great singers but also wonderful human beings. When it was time for them to leave after paying me a visit, one of them would say "Bon courage, champ!" and the other "José, you've got to pull through, otherwise there won't be anyone left for me to match myself with." It was words like that, and a host of others from much less well-known people, that helped me through the ordeal. And that's what gave me the idea that if I ever recovered I would set up a Foundation to help fight that terrible disease.

Q--What has the Foundation achieved so far?

A--It has already become very well known, and several distinguished people are involved in it. Its technical committee is headed by Professor E. Donald Thomas, who won the Nobel Prize for medicine, and several leading Spanish and American scientists. The Foundation, which was set up in Barcelona in 1988, already has offices in the United States, Switzerland and Austria. We have some very ambitious plans and programmes. Our main aim is to help scientific research with funding and grants. Scientists believe that the best way to help fight the disease is to step up research efforts.

Q--Where does it get its money from?

A--The Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez is the Foundation's honorary president. His support has been very valuable. Many public and private institutions have taken their cue from him and given us moral and financial support. We've also raised finance for the Foundation in recent years by organizing gala performances around the world in which I have sung. Then there have been donations from the public. When they are well informed, people are extremely generous.

Q--Is there any particular message you would like to pass on?