The hotel in Berlin had all the charm and tranquility of an airport terminal during the summer package holiday season. It was a mammoth concrete block offering four-star accommodation and a non-stop procession of weedy accountants, traveling rag merchants and Japanese tourists. In one of the banqueting suites a convention of pharmaceutical representatives were discussing marketing strategy for a new tranquilizer. In a neighboring conference room a singer of global renown was joining me for tea.

"I'm enroute to a concert in Poland," he said, but decided to stay in Berlin for the night.

"Are hotels like this something of a professional hazard for you?" I asked.

José Carreras laughed a soft laugh. "They are a part of the game, I'm afraid. And yes, I do spend much of my year living in places like this. It is not the most pleasant part of the business, but complaining about such things is..." He paused, searching for the right word. "...foolish. I am a fortunate man, after all." And fortunate men should not complain about having to stay in luxury hotels, flying long-haul around the world in first-class sleeper seats, or having to put up with the trappings of fame.

But the sad fact is that fortunate men often do whinge about the dark side of celebrity-lack of privacy, or the vicissitudes of stardom. But you'd never hear such prima donna-isms flowing from José Carreras's lips. On the contrary, he is someone who insists on maintaining a strong sense of perspective-even though he knows he is one of the great tenor voices of our time.

"If I find myself getting very tense while waiting to go on before an important performance, I always try to remind myself that I am not a surgeon about to perform a life or death operation. Or a judge about to sentence a man to death in the electric chair. I am just an entertainer."

Just an entertainer? You must be joking José. Because mere entertainers do not get paid £50,000 for a night's work. Nor do they draw 150,000 people to an open-air concert in their hometown of Barcelona. Or sell out the Albert Hall with immense ease. But Carreras still has this disarming habit of downplaying his artistic importance.

Coming from any other superstar singer, such humility might seem deeply fraudulent. But when he insists that what he does for a living is negligible vis-à-vis the great scheme of things, you accept his sincerity. Because, unlike most individuals still in the robust vigor of midlife, he understands a thing or two about his own insignificance-as he looked down the barrel of that loaded gun marked 'mortality'.

It all started in a dentist's surgery. The year was 1987; Carreras had just turned 40 and was beginning to consolidate his position as a household name. But while making a film version of La Bohème in Paris he developed an annoying gum infection. Initially he wrote if off as nothing more than a mouth ulcer and a local Parisian dentist put him on a course of antibiotics. But when the infection doggedly refused to disappear, he was dispatched to a team of specialists. Blood tests followed. And when these set off a series of medical alarm bells, he had to undergo a grim series of bone marrow tests.

Eventually, the specialists reached a verdict: " Mr. Carreras, we regret to inform you that you have been diagnosed with lymphoblastic leukemia." Then they delivered the real knockout punch: he had only a one in ten chance of surviving this illness.

"The impact of this news was, quite simply, terrible," Carreras said, his voice quiet, yet firm. "One moment you're young, successful, full of life; then next, you're facing up to a cruel reality. But then you realize that the only way of succeeding is by having a positive attitude...even though you also know you are about to enter a terrible period. A period during which many things will make you suffer-not just physically, but mentally and spiritually as well."

"Of course, doctors never want to sound completely fatalistic. So, though they tell you that your chances of survival are bad, they still leave a door open. But even though they tell you the odds are one million to one against you, you still have to believe that you will beat the disease. You have no choice. You must find the strength."

But Carreras didn't realize just how much strength would be required. For four months he never left his hospital room in Barcelona, incarcerated in a germ-free bubble. There he discovered the horrors of chemotherapy. And afterwards there was a lengthy stay in Seattle, one of the few medical centers in the world that then specialised in autologous (originating from the recipient, rather than a donor) bone marrow transplants. Back in 1987 it was still something of an experimental procedure: a form of chemical saturation bombing, in which the patient is given five times the usual drug dosage. It had its risks. But Carreras-figuring he had nothing to lose-signed up for the treatment. Throughout this medical ordeal, he managed to maintain mental equilibrium by becoming something of a clinical expert on his illness.

After he finished medical treatment, his leukemia went into remission and has yet to make a reappearance. Now, six years after his initial diagnosis, he bears no signs of illness and though in his late 40s, shows none of the ravages of middle age.

During his convalescence he received 100,000 get well cards, and his 1988 comeback concert in Barcelona was a massive civic event-an emotive homecoming for a local boy who'd beaten the medical odds. Then, of course, there was his benefit concert in Rome during the 1990 World Cup, in which he sang with two other celebrated larynxes, Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo. The event was seen by an estimated worldwide TV audience of one billion.

Since then, there have been his continuing triumphs at La Scala, Covent Garden and the Vienna Staatsoper, hugely successful expeditions into the world of MOR music (culminating in his most recent gold album, 'With a Song in My Heart: A Tribute to Mario Lanza' on Teldec). Add to this his establishment of the José Carreras Leukemia Foundation (for which he has raised over £7 million)-and you can begin to se why his recovery from leukemia really has been the sort of comeback performance of which Lazarus might have approved.

But though Carreras acknowledges that he has been on a spectacular roll since his remission, he speaks about his born-again success in almost muted tones. And when asked if peering into the abyss fundamentally altered his world-view, he pauses before saying: "Certain things in life change-especially in the aftermath of your recovery. Of course your priorities are now different: not everything is career, success, competition. Other things become more important-and you find yourself closer to your faith, to spiritual thinking."

"And you naturally regret certain things-mistakes that you've made. It's a bit like when you loose someone you love. You think: 'I'll plan my life in a different way. I'll be intelligent this time.' But then you go back and make the same mistakes, just as before."

If coming to terms with the tenuousness of life also means breaking away from long-standing domestic routines, Carreras has suffered from that syndrome. His 22-year marriage to his Spanish wife, Mercedes, ended shortly after his recovery, and he then took up with an Austrian air hostess, Jutta Jaegar, who has since been filed away under 'history'.

Carreras is now rumoured to be romantically involved again (though no one in his entourage would mention a name, as questions about the señor's private life are strictly verboten), but you sense that he is, in many ways, a solitary man. For, though he is a devoted father to his two children (19-year old Alberto and 14-year old Julia)-and hurries back whenever possible to be with them at his two homes in Barcelona (an apartment in town and a sizeable spread above the city)-his life is on the road. Just as it always has been.

There's no doubt that he remains as driven as ever. The Mario Lanza album has come on the heels of compilations of songs by Andrew Lloyd Webber and a collection of Hollywood standards produced by George Martin. He still maintains a full calendar of international concerts and recitals (a recent gig at the NEC in Birmingham being followed by his sellout Mario Lanza concert on Tuesday at the Royal Albert Hall). There are appearances at Covent Garden in May, a new recording of La Traviata with Kiri Te Kanawa, and incessant fund-raising work on behalf of his foundation.

In short, Carreras possesses the same intense restless edge that won him his London debut in 1971 (at the age of 24)-and which also saw him make it to the New York City Opera a year later, before finally conquering La Scala (the Everest of opera houses) in 1974. Not bad for a local Barcelona lad who, only a few years earlier, had been studying chemistry at the local university and dreaming big dreams of an operatic career.

"I think I have been rather lucky," Carreras admits. "But I attribute much of my luck to the fact that I took each challenge step by step. And I have always tried to keep my feet on the ground." And demonstrating a certain sang-froid when being told that a disease is probably going to kill you doesn't hurt either.

Who can blame him for being so industrious, so professionally driven? For José Carreras is living proof of an old truism: in times of extreme crisis, work is the best ally when it comes to maintaining your sanity. And there's no way that Carreras is quitting his job now. "Fifteen years ago, I said to myself: 'In the year 2000 I'll be 30 years in the business. I'll be 53, I'll be old; it will be time to retire.' But now I believe that in the year 2000, I'll be very, very young."

Copyright © 1994 You Magazine.