José Cura: A Star Tenor Steps out of the Wings

Wall Street Journal

30 October 1997

Matthew Gureswitsch

“The dogs are barking, Sancho.  That means we’re getting somewhere.”  José Cura, the new tenor from Argentina, is quoting “Don Quixote.”  At first sight, you might not peg him for much of a reader, but Mr. Cura is full of surprises.  An athletic 6-foot-plus, a devoted husband and a father of three, he moves like the martial-arts instructor he used to be.  In Hollywood, where the compliment means something, producers tell him he looks like a movie star (think Andy Garcia – a big Andy Garcia).  While certain of his best-paid colleagues scarcely read music, Mr. Cura’s training includes classical guitar, conducting, and composition.  He has penned, among other things, an ambitious requiem (as yet unperformed), dedicated to the victims of the Falklands War.  Singing now keeps him too busy to write, but it has not altered his sense of who he is.  “I’m a musician by vocation,” he declares, “a tenor by accident.”

No, he’s not another nice lyric, like the personable French-Sicilian Roberto Alagna, but a Latin-style heavyweight – a lirico spinto.  His timbre is dark, somber, even forbidding.  There is metal in the high notes.  His is not an instrument for bantering trifles.  As an actor, he hates “useless gestures,” which has brought him some brickbats in Italy, where audiences like to see more overt emotion, but praise in England, where they appreciate understatement.  (Besides, Mr. Cura doesn’t mind pointing out the British really know theatre.)

The Piedmontese capital of Torino was crackling with anticipation in May when Mr. Cura, at the comparatively tender age of 34, took on Verdi’s Otello, the most daunting tenor part in Italian opera.  In most respects, the show was an instant replay from the Easter Festival in Salzburg, a deluxe affair featuring the Berlin Philharmonic in the pit, led by Claudio Abbado.  The only new face was Mr. Cura, taking over from Placido Domingo, the reigning Otello for two decades.  Raising the stakes just that much higher, Italian national television was broadcasting the premiere live. 

Otello is a killing part, and Mr. Cura doubts that he will return to it soon.  But he was ready.  From the commander’s first clarion cry of triumph to the suicide’s last broken phrases, the tenor never faltered.  The love duet, shared with the radiant Desdemona of Barbara Frittoli, has seldom sounded at once so romantic and so swirling with danger.  Along the way, Otello’s eavesdropping brought a shocking epiphany of self-loathing.  The murder of Desdemona, accompanied by an embrace, was even more devastating that usual: an act of love too far gone to mend except in a double death.

An audience that had moved mountains to get tickets cheered the production to the rafters, reserving the loudest hurrahs for the hero.  Among the throng that waited for more than an hour at the stage door to pay their respects stood a frail, top-hatted old man in opera cape and white scarf.  Verdi’s ghost?  The idea did not seem far-fetched.

Immediately, fans started asking whether the telecast would be issued on home video, a question rumored to hinge chiefly on the royalty demands of the Berlin Philharmonic.  The issue loomed especially large in view of Mr. Cura’s surprisingly short discography.  In this age of instant recordings, there was nothing out there for consumers to take home – nothing, that is, but Puccini’s early and obscure Le Villi (on Nuova Era), a sort of operatic Giselle.

“You have to earn the right to make an album,” Mr. Cura remarked around this time last year.  He was in California for back-to-back debuts, chalking up triumphs in Los Angeles as the Roman general Pollione, two-timing seducer of Druid priestesses in Norma, and in San Francisco as the masochistic mama’s boy Don José in Carmen.  “It’s presumptuous – how do you pronounce that word? – presumptuous to think everybody is waiting.”  Still, he thought he might do a Puccini CD before too long, Puccini being something of a specialty of his.  In 1996, he had headlined a three-hour “Puccini Spectacular” in Australia, playing to sold-out stadiums in Sydney and Melbourne.  Big chunks from La Bohème, Madame Butterfly, La Fanciulla del West, Turandot.  Trucks of scenery, trunks of costumes.  Cast of hundreds.  Four leading sopranos.  One tenor.

The debut disk, recorded by Erato a month after the Torino Otello, went on sale this week, and Puccini it is. Beginning with “Nessun Dorma,” it includes every remotely excerptable tenor solo in the Puccini canon, whether it is technically an “aria” or not.  While every day it seems, recording companies are pushing another wannabe, proudly presenting material by a half dozen or more composers, all of which end up sounding depressingly the same, Mr. Cura does the opposite, finding specificity in selections that might at first glance seem too much of a piece.

His hushed tenderness in the farewell to the world from Tosca sounds entirely unlike the yearning dignity in another such farewell from Fanciulla del West.  The carefree playboy in Manon Lescaut (not perhaps, Mr. Cura’s strongest suit) sounds nothing like the carefree playboy of Madame Butterfly.  And despair, Mr. Cura shows us, come in countless shadings.  (It is not only the heroines whom Puccini tortures.)

Interview with José Cura

Birgit Popp

MediaNotes

1997

[Computer-translation]

José Cura, 35, is considered from many sides to be the tenor of the 21st century, the new star at the tenor firmament. Just within few years he has become one of the most sought-after singers at the world's top opera houses. But the Argentinian singer has not only an outstanding voice, but also some personal views.

Birgit Popp: You have been advised by the choir director to start an education as opera singer, but on the other side you have not been interested in opera, what created your interest?

José Cura: My interest in opera started very slowly when I was 21, 22. But then I gave up, because my voice was not doing very well. When I was 26 I started again. Slowly I began to like it.

B.P.: When you started for the first time, you learned some wrong techniques, which damaged your voice. At that time did you had an education as baritone or as tenor?

J.C.: We were trying to find, what to do. But nothing worked, so I gave up.

B.P.: What made you come back?

J.C.: I don't know. Life, things. I once sang in a concert and the people told me you have to sing and to study. So I studied again. Life in a way pushed me.

B.P.: Some people told you, you are a tenor, some that you are a baritone. You say you had to find your own way. How did you do it?

J.C.: I finally found a teacher who understood my voice and from there I began creating what is now my voice.

B.P.: Was this still in Argentina?

J.C.: Yes, back in '88. It was Horacio Amauri. Then I moved to Europe and I continued with another teacher Vittorio Terranova. This was in '91/'92.

B.P.: What made you move to Europe?

J.C.: If you want to be an opera singer of the Italian repertory and you want to be a good one, you must go to Italy. Because, unless you understand the idiosyncrasy, you will never understand why they sing in a way and not in another. So, you have to live among them. You have to speak with them. If not, you will never understand how they sing like that. Why Italian opera is so different to German opera. In German opera you do not have this big climax of high notes. You have it in Italian operas because Italian people like to shout. It is different kind of style. All people write in the way they are and you have to live with them if you want to sing. If you want to sing Czech opera you have to go to Prague and you have to live in Prague. If not, you will never be able to understand Janácek. You will sing the music, but you will not understand what Janácek wanted.

B.P.: I understood that you made an audition in 1991 at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, where you had been studying also conducting and composition, and they did not want you. They were not interested. Is this correct?

J.C.: In December 1991 I made my last audition in Argentina and I heard people saying to me for the last time you must go and change your job. So I was off to Europe.

B.P.: Finally this was a push for your career . . .

J.C.: Now they want me to return and I might come back to Argentina maybe in 1999.

B.P.: You already sang a Gala-Concert again at the Teatro Colón?

J.C.: I sang a Gala-Concert there in 1994.

B.P.: So you have forgiven them?

J.C.: I don't hold it against them. I think it is normal. Every country has the same problem. You never respect the artists of your country. You think always that the artists of another country are better until everybody says that the artist of your country is good. With the orchestra it is the same. If you go to Prague, maybe everybody thinks that the orchestra from Milano is better than the orchestra from Prague. And the orchestra can come to Germany and they say that the orchestra from Prague is better than the one from Germany. It is always like that. Nobody is prophet in his country.

B.P.: Did you meet your wife already back in Argentina?

J.C.: I met my wife when I was fifteen.

B.P.: How long are you married now?

J.C.: Thirteen years.

B.P.: You have three children. How old are they?

J.C.: Ten, five and two.

B.P.: Does the ten-year-old already show interest in music?

J.C.: No, thanks God, he is a normal kid.

B.P.: But for you there was never anything else in your life?

J.C.: In my life I have done a lot of things. I have been a body-builder, an electrician. I have been a carpenter. I work in my house. I work in the woods. I have done everything. Look at my hands. Do you think these are the hands of a tenor? These are the hands of somebody, who is alive, which is more different and much more interesting.

B.P.: You do recitals in quite a different way. When did you start sitting on the ground and doing things like that? You are really acting.

J.C.: I was always bizarre. Nobody has been able to make me do things I do not want to do. I haven't been doing recitals  for a very long time, but from the very first recital I have done in my life, it was always like that. I enjoy myself on stage, moving around, joking with the gunnies, sitting down. We did a concert in 1996 and I did the le Villi aria lying flat on my back in the middle of the stage. With jeans and with my shirt out of my jeans.

B.P.: When you say you are going new ways in opera, what do you say this?

J.C.: You have seen how I am do a recital. I perform in the same direct way in an opera. If I have to fall down, I fall down. I don't care. I am direct. You will never go to an opera I sing and find me on the stage like that singing my aria. (Setting himself in position) No, never.

B.P.: The acting part has always been very, very important for you?

J.C.: Yes, if not, you stay at home and you can put a tape in. Why are you coming to theater?

B.P.: What do you prefer for the production, a traditional way, a modern way, or do you think it depends on the opera?

 J.C.: You can do whatever you want on stage as long as you do something logical and with good taste. The problem today is that some directors use the stage to psychologize their phantoms and this is not good. As long as you are doing something reasonable and you are really believing in what you are doing, you can do anything on stage. You saw me during my recital just with one chair and all the feeling of Pagliacci was there - only with one chair. So you do not need a big thing. If you have an artist with charisma, an artist with aura and you put one chair in the middle of the stage, everything black around and everything will happen. And you can put a lot of things, fireworks etc., but when the artist has no charisma, nothing happens on stage.

B.P.: You have studied conducting and composing, do you think that you approach an opera in a different way than other singers who do not have this background?

J.C.: It is not only me, every singer who is a musician will approach the opera in a different way. Maybe it is not in a different way, in the only logical way, you should approach music. You should be a musician to approach music. The new generation [of singers], thanks God, at least ninety per cent of the new generation, are musicians. I mean, not everybody is a composer or conductor because that is very difficult. It needs a very in-depth study but at least they play the piano or they play an instrument or they can read the music. And that is very important.

B.P.: How is the situation for you when you feel unhappy about the conducting. Do you say something to the conductor when you do not agree?

J.C.: When you have a conductor who is prepared, you can discuss and have a wonderful communion. When you have an asshole, there is nothing you can do. You have to impose yourself,.  If not, you will lose the concert. Because they can really make it a disaster. If you have a genius, an Abbado, a Muti, one of those, it is so wonderful to work because you do not talk too much. When you have good people, you do not have to speak. You go and do the music.

B.P.: And with the directors?

J.C.: No, not even Abbado or Muti made me do things I did not want to do for the simple fact they never make me do something that is not musical.  So if I make them understand what I try to do, it works. And, if you can prove to a conductor, even he is a big conductor, that what you are doing is worth doing and the effort is interesting, they will accept it. I remember with Abbado we had, with Otello for example, a couple of discussions, how we do this, how we do that, and we sorted it out musically. With big people, that's all you need. The discussions are always with assholes. And thanks God, when you get to a certain postion in your career you have less chances to find an asshole. You work with wonderful people because theaters try to take care to put the big singers with the big conductors, because if not you will go to have a mess and it will not go to work.

B.P.: Do you have the feeling that the conductors give more credence to you because they know that you have the education as conductor yourself?

J.C.: Apart from people that know me for several years, a conductor you find for the first time is not informed about your musical training. He is not going to learn who you are before you have met for a rehearsal, 'okay, let's see what he has studied, okay, he has studied ..., okay he is fine.' Listen, I have a wonderful anecdote. When I have done Cavalleria with Muti in '96, everything was wonderful. I was never out of bar. After the last day we went to dinner altogether and we were discussing a lot of things, and all of a sudden, he asked me, 'did you ever sing Carmen?' And I said 'of course, I also conducted Carmen' - ‘What?' - 'Yes, because I am a musician. I am a musician by choice and a tenor by mistake' and he said to me 'ah, now I understand, why in two weeks you were always in tact. I did not know you were a musician. Now I understand.' Sometimes it proves you that he has not to go to find out how good I was, see the status. He is going there with an open mind to do music. If the colleague is good, it is good, if the colleague is stupid, okay, then you have to.....

B.P.: You are still composing yourself and it is said you would prefer to do the composing for text. Is this right?

J.C.: Yes, I like composing and I like to compose with text because I am a singer and I enjoy composing.

B.P.: In which direction are you composing at the moment?

J.C.: I think that it be in the next century. We have to finish for once with classifications. You write whatever you need or you feel to write or you paint whatever you feel or you need to paint. Because classifications always restrict.

B.P.: Where can we hear what you are composing?

J.C.: For example from the Argentinean recording we have recorded in the end of 1997, beginning of 1998. I wrote two songs for that recording. Because they are songs about love and death I wrote simple, easy and enjoyable music for these songs. But, if you come across my Requiem or my Stabat Mater there you have clusters and series. You have different music. So I think we have to finish for once with all these classifications as the way we have to finish with the limits between the countries. I mean it's ridiculous. Still today you are in the European Community and when you go to England you have to show your passport. So what community is this? Or to change the currencies, that's stupid.  We have to finish with all the things that restrict people.

B.P.: You also said you would prefer the roles you have the feeling you can communicate something to the audience. Roles you mentioned were Otello, Don Jose, Cavaradossi, Des Grieux. You want that the people go out and think about them.

J.C.: You saw me on stage. Can you imagine me singing for twenty-five, thirty-five, forty-five minutes just like that (doing a great pose) without moving? A Wagner opera or whatever? No . . . .

B.P.: That was not the question. The question was what do you want to give to the audience?   What do you want the audience of these four operas to take with them when they leave?  What should they think about?

J.C.:  I can't answer that.  You will take whatever you need according to whatever is in your life, whatever problems you bring with you to the theater and whatever problems you will face tomorrow.  So you take your part, he takes his part, she takes her part. Every human being takes what he or she needs in terms on what he is living. So I never will be able to say I want people going out having this message or that. It is impossible to have this all under control. I mean if you are having a love-affair with somebody and you are seeing butterflies everywhere you will take home harmony and if you have lost two days or a week ago somebody you loved and you have just seen Le Villi you will go out crying. I don't have a better answer. Every human being takes out what he is living at the moment.

B.P.: You were talking about emotions and that you want to show emotions and feelings on stage, and of course, you do, but I thought there might be something you wanted to communicate to make people think about the opera.  I thought there might be a feeling you wanted to generate.  I had the feeling there was more behind.

J.C.: There is one thing I really want. Of course, it is presumptuous to say I want to give a message and people must accept that message or nothing. This is impossible. The only thing I want is for people to enter the theater in one way and then leave in another way.  Whatever way that is.   Because if they enter the theater and leave the theater in the same mood as they entered, it's frustrating for an artist. The music should have changed them, because you have gifted them with the music. Of course, if they don't accept, you have done nothing. If you finish a concert and you go to dinner and after two minutes you don't talk anymore about what you have seen, that was not a success. But, if people two days or a month after that still talking about it, that is a success. I had people saying to they are still talking about the concert in Ireland, still talking about your Otello, still talking about your Cavalleria.  That's wonderful.  That's what you want.

B.P.: If I understand you right now, that talking about it - what includes that it was touching and how you performance was,  but it does not necessarily mean that they talk about the contents of the opera, or the message or the moral of the opera.

J.C.: Listen, it is again the same history. If you are a butcher, if you are a flower-seller, and you have this culture you would talk about that, if you are a musicologist you would talk about other things, if you are a conductor, you will be talking for days about how the conductor moved his hands, if you are a flutist you will criticize the flute and if you are simple and normal, you will talk about the emotions. I mean everybody talks about the thing that touches them most directly. There is one thing I would like everybody to talk about, yes, of course, and that is about emotions. I get crazy when people go out off one of my shows and the day after you read the critics and they say 'oh, wonderful, but the third note, the fourth bar or this or that was a little bit so and so, that is shit. It drives me crazy. It is so cheap, but, of course, cheap criticism is part of frustrated human beings. I think, we have to learn to go with it.

B.P.: Why did you choose to live in Paris?

J.C.: I lived in Verona for four years. And then, because Italian bureaucracy is very messy, unfortunately, I had to move, I had to leave the country.  I moved to France because some people of the French government invited me to come.

B.P.: As I understand one of your hobbies is to work in your house.

J.C.: Oh, yes, like every young couple - for years and years we have been renting and now finally we bought our house. And we bought the house of our dreams as happens to everybody. I am normal like everybody. And now we are working in our house.

B.P.: So is it an old house?

J.C.: No, it is not that old, it is from the fifties. Forty years old.

B.P.: You have been living in France for three years now.  Are you going more into the French repertory?

J.C.: I have two operas of the French repertory, which are Samson et Dalila and Carmen. Everybody says I would have to learn Werther. I do not know, because right now, Werther is sung by lyric tenors.  Maybe that is a mistake. I don't know, I'll have to study it and find out.

B.P.: You say that for you a lot of roles which are considered as dramatic, like Otello or Radames, that are not really dramatic for you. Which roles would you consider for really dramatic?

J.C.: I think there is a mistake in the classification. One thing is to be dramatic and one other thing is to be a shouter. You can have the most intense drama of your life in silence. And that is the mistake. People say Otello is dramatic, so you must go there and shout. Otello is the drama of a man, who after being a big general is breaking into pieces. It is the last twenty-four hours of a poor human being breaking into pieces. So how can you shout? But, of course, when you are not able to act, when you are not able to transmit energy and sufferance without shouting, you shout.

B.P.: So you think there is not a really dramatic role in your sense because you said the classification is wrong.

J.C.: No, no, the roles are dramatic. What is a mistake is to think that dramatic is a synonym of shout. That is the mistake. Samson is a dramatic role but Samson after the beginning of the opera, when he imposes himself as the leader, then he must do the most incredible soft singing. All the duet of the second act is soft, sensual singing, it is not shouting. And the role still is dramatic. So the problem is trying not to go dramatic as the synonym of shouting, of being loud. You can be dramatic in silence and you can be joyful making a big noise.  It all depends on the energy. Most of the most dramatic scenes of theater, of cinema, of opera happen in silence.

B.P.: What future plans do you have? I mean singing Otello already with 34 years is fantastic but what is in the future. What stays?  What are the challenges?

J.C.: Of course, I have been so lucky that in the last three years of my life I done debuts in 25 roles, so even if I still have another four, five or six roles I would like to do, I now have the chance of repeating those roles and improve them. And this is much more difficult than doing the debuts because you can do a debut and if it is good it can only get better.  People forgive you because it is your debut. People say 'okay, it is a good debut and okay he will be better in the future.' - Now, after I have done the debut, I mean the dangerous part is that I now have to show that each time I sing a role I am improving. And that is very difficult.

B.P.: You have done so many debuts at the big opera houses over the last three years, at Covent Garden, at la Scala, at Vienna, how do you feel about this success? It must be overwhelming somehow?

J.C.: I have been doing music since I was twelve. I am now thirty-five, so I have been doing music for twenty-three years. Which is apparently surprising for everybody, and how from one day to the other, miracle, miracle, but this is not that true, because after twenty-three years of preparation, of trying to be prepared for the moment, now is the moment, Now, is the moment you know and the moment they see, but under that you have twenty-three years of work. That is why I am the way I am on stage. The way I move on stage is because I have twenty-three years of background.

B.P.: But, no matter how hard you have been working to have these debuts at all the big theaters must be overwhelming.

J.C.: Of course, it is overwhelming and it is nice. I enjoy it. What can I say? You want me to tell you that I am every time I go to theater I tremble. 'Oh, God, I am in La Scala.'   It's not that.  I really enjoy being on stage.

B.P.: It must have changed your life.

J.C.: Of course, everything changes my life. This is changing my life. After the chat with you tomorrow I will be a different guy.

B.P.: I don't think so.

J.C.: Of course, yes, everything that happens in your life, if you are intelligent enough to capitalize, changes your life.

B.P.: You said in an interview referring to singing Otello at such a young age that you were warned that once you sing Otello, you would not want to sing any other role.  You said 'It's not that the role is dangerous to the singer but that  the singer is dangerous for the role.'  What did you mean?

J.C.:  The danger of Otello is like the danger of being in touch with perfect things. It is like the danger of being in front of La Gioconda. It is like the danger to be in front of the most beautiful landscape. After that you say, okay, what now, what else? That is the problem with Otello. My teacher Vittorio Terranova told me the problem with Otello is not the singing. If you are a good actor enough, if you are intelligent enough, you will cope with the character. The problem with Otello is that once you have sung Otello, there is no way to go.

B.P.: That was the question about the challenges.

J.C.: Exactly, it is the master piece of master pieces. It is like being a baritone and singing Don Giovanni. Where are you go then? Every other opera sounds cheap after that. It is like tasting the most incredible wine and after that every other wine is like bbbb [sic]. That is the problem of Otello. It takes you everywhere. It changes your life and what do you do then? Even the most incredible operas like Samson et Dalila or Carmen they have pages, where the opera lags. Otello is like 'ahhhh' all the time. You finish the opera and you cannot get out of the character. What can you do? That is Otello.