I loved the way Carreras sang this role in Washington, but Turin was a revelation. He sang wonderfully on Sunday. To be sure, the higher notes were lacking in the ease and brilliance of his youth, and you could detect a distinct 'change of gears' when he had to sing them. There was a loss of colour and resonance, but they were confident, strong, and true and sounded much less 'forced' than than in recent years. His entrance on "John Plake! John Plake! with 2 B flats - a truly scary way to make your entrance in an opera - was perfectly done. Perhaps it helped that in this production, these opening lines are heard from off-stage, and indeed this gave them a particularly haunting quality. But his middle voice. Ah his middle voice! It was truly beautiful, resonant and fascinatingly coloured. Apart from the high notes, he sounded like he did 20 years ago. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. The "Io non sono un buffone" of Act 3 were intensely moving not only because of his acting (which was superb throughout), but because of the way he sang it. Yet again, not just a beautiful voice, but a voice that appeared to be rising up from the very depths of his soul.

The Dolly here was the same one in Washington. In La Repubblica, October 21, 2000 Angelo Foletto wrote: "As in 1998 in Zurich where this production was born, Jose Carreras who has regained his declamatory powers and conveyed powerful emotion hit the mark as the protagonist, even if he was a bit 'sparing' with his vocal colouring. Elisabete Matos (Dolly): was convincing and sumptuous." However, I was rather less impressed than Signor Foletto with Matos. She did throw herself into the role, but when I think of a 'sumputous' soprano voice, I think of Kiri te Kanawa, Renee Fleming, or Montserrat Caballe in her prime. I found Elisabete Matos' voice to be unrelentingly loud and consequently rather unexpressive.

The Teatro Regio was rebuilt in the early 1970's. It has excellent sight lines but weird acoustics (even after several later modifications which had been made to the interior to correct the problem). Although the orchestra pit is one of the deepest I've ever seen, the sound of the orchestra is still overwhelming. The voices coming from the stage, except for the most powerful singers, are often drowned out. This might also be because the rest of the cast was very young. The only two members of the cast that I could consistently hear from Row 15 were Carreras and Matos. However, unlike Carreras, Matos' rather poor Italian diction made the words she was singing virtually incomprehensible.

You could hear this renewed vigor and health in his singing. Of course as singers get older, they almost inevitably have to work harder and more obviously to make their voice do what they want it to do. But on Sunday afternoon, his voice just poured out of him, flexible, strong and expressive.