There is life after the Three Tenors. In fact, Jose Carreras insists, there's life during the Three Tenors.

As one-third of the world's most outrageously successful operatic act, the Spanish singer continues his solo career in opera houses and recital halls. Not that he has to.

A series of huge-selling CDs, videos and internationally televised broadcasts of stadium concert spectaculars with fellow supertenors Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti have brought unimagined wealth. Yet Carreras continues to pursue a busy solo career that took a back seat amid the furor over that tenorial trio.

Those big shows are nice, he acknowledged, but so is going solo.

"I feel a wonderful intimacy in a recital -- a communion between an artist and audience that I cherish," said the tenor, who will sing a program of Italian and Spanish songs with pianist Lorenzo Bavaj on Friday at the Buell Theatre.

The audience will be smaller, but the stakes remain as high. "I can assure you that the tension and pressure are the same as the stadium concerts," he stressed.

A month away from turning 53, Carreras still finds joy in singing in opera productions. "I will not forget that part of my career," he said from his home in Barcelona, Spain. "My roots are in the opera house, playing a character. That is how I was born as a singer."

He is preparing for productions of a true operatic rarity he helped revive: Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's Sly. "It was composed in 1927 and has been out of the repertory for decades," he said. "The director of La Scala asked me to look at it years ago, but the project was dropped. I am so happy the opportunity has come again."

These days, Carreras appears in two or three productions a season, choosing such major operatic capitals as New York City, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Then there's the other side of his performing life indoors: recitals.

"I enjoy singing with just a piano," he said. "The range of repertory is enormous. For me, it is a different way to present myself as a singer."

Every year he agrees to do 30 to 35 concerts and a dozen opera performances. "It's the balance that I select," the tenor said, adding that his modest workload has no connection to maintaining his health since defeating cancer in 1987.

"I feel 100 percent," he said. "My illness is in the past. I feel too good to even think about it."

Which is not to say the memory has disappeared. "I am very much involved with the disease I was suffering from," he said -- one of several references he made to his leukemia without ever calling it by name. The involvement focuses on the Jose Carreras International Leukemia Foundation, based in his hometown of Barcelona. The organization, supported by private donations and proceeds from the Three Tenors concerts and recordings, has branches offering assistance with bone marrow transplants in the United States, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and, most recently, Japan.

Lost in the hubbub over the Three Tenors phenomenon is the fact that the trio's first collaboration, in 1990, was organized as a celebration of Carreras' conquest of cancer. Since then, each concert has been a sellout, no matter how expansive the stadium.

Next up is a Three Tenors Christmas. "We will perform a holiday concert on Dec. 23," Carreras reported, adding that, naturally, it will be televised and recorded. No word on whether they'll dress up as the Magi.

"We enjoy ourselves," he said of those wildly popular shows. Such has not always been the response from critics, who have routinely dismissed the extravaganzas as circus-like and lowbrow. "You expect that not everyone will think they are perfect," Carreras responded. "But I honestly feel that there is much more positive than negative in our performances.

"It is now possible to bring this type of singing to a much larger audience. All of us hope that those people who hear us will go deeper into this music. And we know this has happened. We get thousands of letters saying, 'Your concert introduced me to this wonderful music.' I think it is a tremendous achievement to be able to sing in front of so many people."

In addition to his success with Pavarotti and Domingo, Carreras has recently recorded two pop-flavored solo discs, each converting familiar orchestral themes into love songs with Italian and Spanish texts. Just released is Pure Passion, the follow-up to Passion. The tenor defended such fluff.

"I always wanted to sing great melodies," he said, referring to adaptations of such familiar fare as Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto and Paganini Rhapsody, Tchaikovsky's Pathetique Symphony and Wagner's Tannhaeuser Overture. "There are so many beautiful things for orchestra, so I decided to have lyrics put to them.

"I am merely following the legacy of (Enrico) Caruso and (Tito) Schipa. They sang lighter things, such as Neopolitan songs. This is not a new idea.

"When I sing this material, it is the same process (as an aria). I am trying to express myself and bring the right meaning to the words. It is another kind of program that can be assimilated for a general audience.

"Maybe it is not for connoisseurs. These people feel comfortable in a stadium. Maybe they are too shy to go to a concert hall or opera house. But only one thing matters to them, and to me -- that what they listen to touches them.

"I don't feel guilty about singing these songs, and I don't feel that way when I appear with Placido and Luciano. For decades, we have proved what we can do on an opera stage."