Jose Carreras—Live. Jose Carreras (ten); Vincenzo Scalera (pf).

Faure: Apres un reve. Massenet: Ouvre tes yeux bleus. Turina: Los dos miedos. Nacho: Tengo nastalgia de ti. Intima. Liszt: Three Sonetti di Petrarca, S270/72. Puccini: Sole e amore. Terra e mare. Menti all'aviso. Tosti: Aprile. Non t'amo piu. 'A vucchella. L'ultimo canzone. Cardillo: Core 'ngrato. Falvo: Dicitencello vuie.

Polyphon (Full price) # 836 758-1; (Cassette) 836 758-4; (CD) 836 758-2 (71 minutes: DDD). Recorded at a recital in the Vienna State Opera on September 16th, 1988.

Affection is what this record expresses: it is there in every phrase of the singer's, and over-whelmingly in the audience's greeting of him at the start and in their applause at the end. It is perhaps not so very hard to understand why the sickness or early death of a great singer should inspire a special feeling of tragedy. When Carreras was taken ill and it came to be known that he was suffering from leukaemia the general sadness was deep, and it touched that nerve which protests against such things as part of the order of being So when his recovery allowed him to sing again; the emotion was proportionate to the original shock. This recital in the Vienna State Opera House was his first outside Spain: he felt a particular warmth towards the Viennese for their support during his illness, and this (the sleeve-note explains) was a gesture of gratitude. By the time the present review is in print, all being well, London audiences will have heard him too and will have extended a welcome no less heartfelt.

Such an illness does not leave a singer unscathed. In this programme Carreras paces himself carefully so far as high notes are concerned. He takes low keys ('A vucchella for instance is sung in E flat), and offers the top A and B flat once in a way to show that they're still there, but for the most part prefers to go above the stave as little as need be. I he feeling that this was a voice growing dangerously overweight had arisen several years ago, and it cannot be said that this recital allays it. He is best in the Puccini songs—the first of them that extraordinary preview of the quartet in La boheme, and the third with its fragments of what was to become "Donna non vidi mai" in Uanon Lescaut. Faure, Massenet and Liszt find him wanting in poise of voice and style, and indeed the stylishness of the occasion owes much to the excellent pianist. But the occasion was not one where style was the main issue. There is no doubt what that was, and no doubt that it was uppermost in the mind of everyone present: in one word, life.

Copyright © 1989 Gramophone Magazine.