The first thing you think when you meet José Carreras is how can such a big
sound come from this slight, softly spoken man. He is pale, with a
translucent quality to his skin - one puff of wind would surely blow him
over. But when you get a flash of his dark eyes, his face lights up and then
you see José Carreras for what he is: a man of incredible strength and
resolve. A man who has not only been to the edge of death and had his life
restored to him, but who has devoted the remainder of that life to ensuring
others are spared the searing experience he endured.
He looks tired, as well he might, after a barnstorming appearance at the Proms
in the Park the previous night. Another triumph. Yet 20 years ago, he was
fighting for his life, struck down in the prime of his career by an
aggressive form of leukaemia. His doctors gave him a 10 per cent chance of
survival.
Success of the Three Tenors
Not only did he survive, but there was a bonus; the phenomenon of the Three
Tenors. Devised initially by Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti as a way
of welcoming back their “little brother”, their first concert in Rome on the
eve of the 1990 World Cup final caused a sensation. The rest is history.
More than a billion people were estimated to have watched a live broadcast
of their concert in Los Angeles in 1994.
In 1987, Carreras was 41, one of the greatest tenors of his generation. He was
in Paris, about to start work on a film version of La Bohème, when he got
toothache. “Thinking that I must have an infection, I went to the dentist.
He gave me some antibiotics and told me to come back in a few days. But I
felt worse, bad enough to want go to the hospital for a check-up. I thought
it would be simple and they would tell me that I'd had a bad reaction to the
antibiotics.
“They did a few tests and told me that I had to stay in hospital for the
night. I said but this is impossible, I'm shooting a film tomorrow'. They
said no way. I remember being irritated. I had no time to stay overnight.
And then they told me the diagnosis and that it was lymphoblastic leukaemia.
It was a shock. I was ignorant about medicine then but I did know that
leukaemia was a blood cancer and what the consequences were. Let's say it
was a difficult thing to digest.”
Did he think he was going to die or did he think from the start that he was
going to survive? “I thought leukaemia is a battle and that lots of people
do not win it. But from the first moment, the doctors give you certain
percentages of success with all the various treatments. I thought if there
is a possibility within one million, this has to be my possibility and I
have to be determined and fight for it. I was lucky to have the right
medical team and the support of my family and friends - indeed the affection
of people right round the world. It was incredible the solidarity. It gave
me the extra strength I needed.”
He flew home to Catalonia and Barcelona for initial treatment which gave him
temporary remission. Hope then lay in a treatment called autologous bone
marrow transplant in which bone marrow stem cells are taken from the patient
and stored. The remaining bone marrow is then destroyed with chemotherapy
and radiotherapy before the stored cells are infused back. It allows more
intense treatment and a greater chance of remission.
Carreras's oncologists were involved in a research collaboration with doctors
in Seattle and knew that they were pioneering use of a new drug called
GM-CSF, which prompts the growth of key white blood cells after the
transplant (he was to become only the second person in the world to receive
the treatment).
So he left for Seattle. But there was another reason to leave Barcelona. “The
social pressure was intense, there were photographers everywhere.” He had to
get away to get better.
He travelled to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center with his family and
was to spend the next 10 months alone in a sterile hospital room. At this
point, his career, his voice, took second place. “All these things were
secondary,” he says. “I was fighting for my life.” At the time he was
married to his first wife, Mercedes, by whom he has two children, Alberto
and Julia. But he also had a mistress, Jutta Jager. Both took turns at his
bedside, an extraordinary scenario worthy of one of his operas.
Arias filled gruelling radiotherapy sessions
The treatment was gruelling, particularly the radiotherapy sessions which left
him feeling weak, dizzy and sick. And when José Carreras, ever modest and
ever the master of understatement, says in his soft voice, “they were not
pleasant”, you know they took him to the limits of endurance. He devised a
programme of arias that he could hum to fill exactly the radiotherapy
session time - four minutes of Aida, three and a half of Carmen. “They were
a good help.”
The most painful procedure was the lumbar punctures, in which a sample of the
fluid surrounding the spinal cord is withdrawn with a needle. “But at least
they were quick, only 10-15 seconds.” Most people would have had general
anaesthesia but it was the one thing Carreras refused, knowing that the
tubes that are placed in the airways during an anaesthetic (called
intubation) could damage his voice. “Of that I was really afraid,” he says.
Did he allow himself to believe he might sing again? “I thought that if I
survived, then my voice would too.” His blood counts dropped and for a time
things looked desperate, but then his bone marrow suddenly started working.
He tried to entertain himself with books and movies but there were times when
he felt so bad that he couldn't even read and instead listened to music. He
played Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No 2 constantly. “It became a good luck
charm. I still listen to it often.”
He only allowed himself to believe he would survive after he left hospital.
Recovery for many leukaemia patients is haunted by the thought of relapse
but that wasn't how it was for him. “The feeling for me of recovery was
stronger than the feeling of relapse.” His optimism was fuelled in
particular by meeting leukaemia survivors when he was in Seattle. “It gave
me such a lot of determination, it was so encouraging, so important to my
recovery.” Since then he has made visiting leukaemia patients a major
mission. “Wherever I am, in Eastern Europe, everywhere, I try to visit
patients and give them a little hope.”
He started singing in the shower
In less than four months he was singing in public again. He started by singing
in the shower. At first his voice, like his body was weak, but he gradually
built it up with exercise and with swimming. An open air concert in July
1988 in Barcelona was attended by an astonishing 150,000 people. “I felt the
affection and solidarity of people. It was very important for my recovery. I
felt so much in the debt of science and society.”
His personal life proved more problematic. He was seen everywhere with Jutta
following his recovery, but he procrastinated after his wife divorced him in
1992. A year later, Jutta married an Austrian businessman with whom she had
three sons. The couple were eventually reunited in 2004 and married two
years ago.
Musing on his tumultuous love life, Carreras recently said: “With years, you
understand many things. It is important to be passionate, but it is also
important to combine the heart and head. I have made mistakes in both my
private and professional lives.”
His brush with death also led to some soul-searching. “I had been a bit
selfish. My profession was very important to me. Afterwards, I tried to get
closer to my kids, my family, to people in general. You mature all of a
sudden. I remember the great unhappiness of those times, but also the way
not only family and friends but the public surrounded me with affection. It
gave me the possibility to create my foundation.”
The José Carreras International Leukaemia Foundation, which now has affiliates
in Germany, Switzerland and the US, has raised more than e150 million for
research. “It is fundamental to support scientists,” says Carreras, who once
studied chemistry at Barcelona University at a point when he - madly -
thought he ought to have a second string to his bow, just in case the
singing didn't work out. The foundation has supported two of the world's
leading cord blood banks, created Redmo, the Spanish bone marrow donor
organisation that has enlisted more than 65,000 donors and has a programme
of social service projects for leukaemia patients and their families.
Football, fast cars and Italian food
But for all his high-profile projects, Carreras is a modest, reticent man. He
jokes that football is the “second great passion” in his life. Not far
behind are his love of fast cars and Italian food, particularly ice-cream.
However, like most opera singers, he asks for no ice in drinks and for
air-conditioning to be turned off becuase of its dehydrating effects.
His fight with leukaemia has changed him in some ways. “To go through such an
experience, your priorities change. Things take another dimension. Certain
values in life become stronger. It's difficult to express my gratitude. But
I am the proof that it is possible to win the battle.”
Leukaemia Facts
Adult acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is a form of cancer that affects the
blood-producing cells in the bone marrow. It is fatal if left untreated,
although it is potentially curable with chemotherapy. Although eight out of
ten adults with the disease will go into remission, there is a high chance
of relapse and overall cure rates are still only 20-40 per cent.
José Carreras is hosting a Gala on December 11 at the Royal Albert Hall for
his International Leukaemia Foundation and Mencap. Guests include Kiri Te
Kanawa and flamenco supremo Sara Baras. Tickets can be purchased from the
Royal Albert Hall box office at 020-7589 8212, online at www.royalalberthall.com,
or See Tickets on 08712 305540
An extraordinary man. I saw him perform in Sydney in 1991 and again in 1994. And interestingly the article mentions 'Catalonia' rather than 'Spain'...Carreras of course is Catalonian, not Spanish.
Wendy, Maury, France