José Carreras

Josep Maria Carreras Coll Catalan ?u?z?b m???i? k??re??s ?k?? born 5 December 1946 better known as José Carreras k??r??r?s Spanish xo?se ka?re?as is a Spanish operatic tenor who is particularly known for his performances in the operas of Donizetti Verdi and Puccini Born in Barcelona he made his debut on the operatic stage at 11 as Trujamán in Manuel de Fallas El retablo de Maese Pedro and went on to a career that encompassed over 60 roles performing in the worlds leading opera houses and on numerous recordings He gained fame with a wider audience as one of the Three Tenors with Plácido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti in a series of large concerts from 1990 to 2003 He is also known for his humanitarian work as president of the José Carreras International Leukaemia Foundation La Fundació Internacional Josep Carreras per a la Lluita contra la Leucèmia which he established following his own recovery from the disease in 1988 Carreras was born in Sants a workingclass district in Barcelona He was the youngest of Antònia Coll i Saigi and Josep Carreras i Solers three children In 1951 his family emigrated to Argentina in search of a better life However this move abroad proved unsuccessful and within a year they had returned to Sants where Carreras was to spend the rest of his childhood and teenage years He showed an early talent for music and particularly singing which intensified at the age of six when he saw Mario Lanza in The Great Caruso The story recounted in his autobiography and numerous interviews is that after seeing the film Carreras sang the arias incessantly to his family especially La donna è mobile often locking himself in the familys bathroom when they became exasperated with his impromptu concerts At that point his parents with the encouragement of his grandfather Salvador Coll an amateur baritone found the money for music lessons for him At first he studied piano and voice with Magda Prunera the mother of one of his childhood friends and at the age of eight he also started taking music lessons at Barcelonas Municipal Conservatory At just eight years old he also gave his first public performance singing La donna è mobile accompanied by Magda Prunera on the piano on Spanish National Radio A recording of this still exists and can be heard on the video biography José Carreras A Life Story On 3 January 1958 at the age of eleven he made his debut in Barcelonas great opera house the Gran Teatre del Liceu singing the boy soprano role of Trujamán in Manuel de Fallas El retablo de Maese Pedro A few months later he sang for the last time as a boy soprano at the Liceu in the second act of La Bohème Throughout his teenage years he continued to study music moving on to the Conservatori Superior de Música del Liceu and taking private voice lessons first with Francisco Puig and later with Juan Ruax whom Carreras has described as his artistic father Following the advice of his father and brother who felt that he needed a backup career he also entered the University of Barcelona to study chemistry but after two years he left the university to concentrate on singing Source Article José Carreras from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30