Now I Want to Succeed in Argentina

Clarin

Armando M Rapallo

August 1998

He has been based in Europe since 1991. He has triumphed in the great theaters of the world. Besides being a singer, he is a composer. Next year he will debut at the Colón with Otello. He is 35 years old and a Newells fan.

He is already a phenomenon, the up and coming tenor. In this century there have been Argentine singers of note, from Hina Spani, Isabel Marengo and Delia Rigal to Felipe Romito, Renato Sassola and Angel Mattiello, among many important personalities in their respective areas.  But it is not easy to find—and not only among Argentine artists—a figure of the magnitude of José Cura, far beyond his triumph in the Operalia contest (in 1994, and with Plácido Domingo as president of the jury), and with an ascending career as meteoric as it is dazzling.  The day after finishing his recording of Camille Saint-Saëns's Opera Samson et Dalila in London, directed by Sir Colin Davis and with the Russian Olga Borodina in the stellar female role, the Paris-based Rosarino tenor talked with Clarín. 

Clarin:  You never liked the labels, the typecasting ... In fact, you never agreed to be the fourth tenor.

José Cura:  No way, please! I'm not the fourth tenor because I'm not even just a singer. I consider myself an artist who has been making music for a long time, as a composer, as a conductor and also as a singer. Also, I have other interests. My book on photography will be released shortly.

Clarin: Your preference for acting is known. Did you really say you were an actor who sings, not a singer who pretends to act?  Was that why you have waited for the recording studio?

José Cura:  At the beginning, yes, but only because I wasn’t able to transmit the experience, the sensation, to the maximum.  The fact is there are still many people who judge an opera singer as if he were a record, trying to reduce the character to an abstract. In opera the different position is considered a great taboo. Let's remember the end of Samson et Dalila, where the central character is tortured and mistreated, and one voluntarily makes unorthodox sounds, more logical for the character because of what is happening to him. There are some critics who will point out the tenor's error in making the unusual sound, regardless of the sense in which it was emitted.  Five minutes earlier they were praising everything, saying that it was a marvel.  I prefer to modify certain results. In Otello, for example, I sing while lying on my back.  I think that if you just want to hear the voice you can stay home with a whiskey and not go to the theater. That's what records are for. If you go to the theater you want a theatrical show, and I think this is the great challenge for the modern singer. Fifty years ago you went to the theater because there weren't so many records, no videos, and no TV. If by not sacrificing a phrase or a note we do not transmit direct emotions, the scene has no reason to exist.

With regard to albums, José Cura's first CD, Puccini Arias, with the curious orchestral conductor Plácido Domingo, includes the most important things written by Giacomo Puccini for tenor (eleven of his twelve operas, naturally excepting Suor Angelica) and is a clear example of Cura's aesthetics, from the expressive eloquence of his diction in Non piangere Liú and his voice of singular power throughout the whole register. Cura-as-actor first of all reveals himself in his unsurpassed version of Firenze è come un alberto fiorito, from Gianni Schicchi and in the arias of Il Tabarro, where the full force of Puccinian verism emerges, creating a Liugi as ideal as Dick Johnson from La fanciulla del west, especially in the fragment Ch’ella mi creda.  It is not risky to say that in the famous Nessun dorma from Turandot, José Cura now far exceeds the comparison with Pavarotti, Carreras and even with Domingo, for the purity of the emission, the impeccable placement of the high notes, the beauty of its lyrical spinto tone and the remarkable volume of a young voice, with a robust body like few others.

Clarin:  Tell us about your repertoire.

José Cura:  At the beginning of my career I generally accepted everything, but now, after taking on 30 roles in four years, I am in a position to negotiate with producers and theaters. I have already arranged with Colón to do Otello in the season next year. And I put as a sine qua non condition that the entire cast be Argentine or South American. I want to have that feeling of sharing this with my people. To sing with Europeans, I stay in Europe.

Clarin:  Are you aware of what is happening in the Colón?

José Cura:  Not that much. I found out from Clarin that Renán resigned, which worries me a lot, since I respect and esteem him. I was with him a few years ago in Milan and we sealed my performance for next year. His departure is worrying because I fear falling into the hands of those who put up obstacles. Now I want to succeed in Argentina, but not only to gather applause.

Sometimes I think that in Argentina we try to carry forward the adage no one is a prophet in his land until his last achievements. I say this from experience.

Clarin:  What happened?

José Cura:  In 1983 they rejected me at the Instituto del Colón, and in 1990 they told me that maybe they would give me a piece of paper.

Clarin:  You once said that opera is not believable.

José Cura:  If one goes to its essence, it is not believable. There is an insurmountable limit, many things that are said while singing. But look at Wozzeck, so real and plausible, a very realistic love and death story ... It’s the same with characters like Cavaradossi (Tosca).  I recommend that you see my Otello live.  Someone in England said that I owe more to Orson Welles than to Mario del Monaco in that work.

Clarin:  Who is your favorite tenor?

José Cura:  Ramón Vinay, the Chilean, an odd Otello, an exceptional actor ...

Clarin:  What do you think of opera on film and TV?

José Cura:  It serves to spread the art, but I am only interested if they act realistically and not if they are on a stage.

Clarin:  Do your records sell well?

José Cura:  My Puccini album sold 35,000 copies in Great Britain, against only a thousand in Buenos Aires. And Anhelo has already made it to the top spot at Tower in Piccadilly Circus. From now on, who knows?  I believe I have a historical obligation to show the music of my country.  There were some who were concerned about the results before the album was released. I told the producers that if it did not sell well they could charge the cost to my bank account.

Too Many Tensions for a Single Afternoon

Diario Ambito Financiero

Marcelo Zapata

April 1999

 [Excerpt]

"I don't know what would have happened with any other singer in his place. Cura not only mastered himself perfectly but managed a very good performance. But only in the next performances will he be at his full potential." The comment, made in one of the aisles during the second intermission, was from someone who knew the singer well. Evidently, José Cura's much-delayed, bumpy and long-awaited debut had been too stressful. The Colón weighed on his back as if he were singing Samson instead of Otello.

Cura has had a history of rejections and reversals in his relationship with the different authorities of the theater, which has become a symbol of the unhealthy relationship that Argentina too often shows its best artists. And, by the way, Cura doesn’t have a submissive temperament.  It was natural that all this had an impact on his mood and behavior. Sunday was a most traumatic day, and his first opera at the Colón turned out to be more of an initiation trial than a standard debut.

The particular conditions under which Cura undertook the role also contributed to this sense. He arrived in the country well in advance, went through the emotional stress of the reunion with Rosario, his hometown, his family, his old friends, his old teachers; he gave two recitals, made constant trips between Buenos Aires and Rosario and vice versa in the middle of rehearsals, and as if that were not enough, he also had to face the possibility that the trade union conflicts at the Colón could affect the debut. The dress rehearsal, on his orders, was strictly behind closed doors and, according to some witnesses, Cura merely "marked" his character (that is, he didn’t act as if he were in performance).

As a result, Sunday's performance was, in effect, a virtual dress rehearsal and almost all those close to him agree that it was "tremendously demanding," no less so than the character with which he defiantly chose to make his debut.  Otello has an early entrance on stage but no arias for showcasing; just a shout of triumph before disappearing until the end of the act. Placed too far back by the regisseur, his "Esultate...!" was impeccable but not large or showy, both of which most of the audience was expecting. Also at the behest of a cruel régie who forced the performers to go up and down stairs throughout the performance as if at a gym, neither Cura nor the rest of the cast came out to greet the audience at the intermissions, something unforgivable on a Sunday afternoon.

From the second, and especially by the third act, the tenor the Europeans praised so much came to the fore, and this is the one who will surely be present in the future performances.  Fortunately, what remains [after Sunday’s performance]is the promise of a long career at the Colón by Cura, undoubtedly an exceptional artist.

In the Ring at the Colón

La Nacion

Martin Liut

17 April 1999

"The story of Otello is exactly what happens to Tyson, what happened to Monzón or what could happen to me," said the rising Argentine tenor, star of Verdi's opera, which will open tomorrow at the Colón.

"If he were painted black, he’d look just like Tyson," joked one of the privileged in the audience who watched tenor José Cura in the rehearsal of the first act of Verdi's opera Otello, which will premiere tomorrow.

After singing his victory over the Turks and while the village chorus applaud him, Cura, with his rugby physique, nods slightly, moves his hands and taps the heels with his immaculate white sneakers on the red steps, like a boxer before entering the ring.

The analogy is not whimsical, as it is quite close to the vision that the tenor, who at 36 will make his debut at the Colón after triumphing in Europe and the United States, has of the famous Shakespearean character.

"The story of Otello is exactly what happens with Tyson or what happened to Monzon... or what could happen with Cura himself. For the moment he sings, the voice is going well, everyone pays to go see him, but what if tomorrow he runs out of voice? Not even the cabs will stop for me. It's sad but that's how it is and that's the lesson of Otello," said the tenor to La Nación before the start of the rehearsals.

Obviously, Cura's present is more than brilliant and it shows in the poise with which he performs at the Colón, a theater from which he left on bad terms when he was not yet known and to which he returns through the front door eight years later.

As soon as his character leaves the stage, Cura goes down into the stalls to watch Beni Montresor's staging and share impressions with Desdemona, the Chilean soprano Verónica Villarroel.

Complicity in action

The routine is the same after a short break, until it is their turn to return for the famous love duet of the first act. With Montresor's watchful eye on the stage, Cura and Villarroel experiment with places to move, the response of the room. You can tell they know each other well by the complicity with which they perform the scene, alternating seriousness with gestures directed at the orchestra's conductor, Piergiorgio Morandi, and even the occasional joke. The alchemy works, despite the fact that neither the lights nor the costumes are yet in place, but it is clear that the tenor can handle both the imposing nature of the warrior and that of the passionate man.

According to Cura, the story of the commander of the Venetian troops in Cyprus who, blinded by unfounded jealousy, kills his beloved Desdemona and then commits suicide, "is not simply a woman-man problem, although it is a drama of jealousy. It intermingles racism, classism, mercenarism, court intrigues, the use of people."

"The problem with the Otello that Verdi wrote," he continues, "is that it lacks Shakespeare's first act in which it is clear the scandal that is generated when everyone learns that Otello (a black man) married Desdemona and how they want to take her away from him. Iago tells the council: "Guys, we need this swarthy man to stop the Muslims from coming and blowing us up.  Let him have the blonde.  When the war is over, we'll take her away and get rid of him."  He says it in Shakespeare's words, which are more elegant," he says as he bursts out laughing, enthusiastic about what he defines as his "arrabalera" explanation of Shakespeare's drama.

-Didn't Otello realize he was being used?

-Of course he did, but as I have come to realize if he didn’t let himself be used he wouldn’t eat. The problem is to keep his balance without losing his temper. He knew that the nobles used him, he wasn't stupid.  But as a tribal man, the only thing he cared about was: "don't touch what is mine."   Whether it is the horse, the mine, the guitar, don't touch!  Everything breaks loose when Iago realizes that the only thing that matters to him as a male is his female, and this is what the text says at the beginning of the second act.

Perhaps one of the keys in Cura's construction of the famous Shakespearean character is to have broken with what he considers the cliché of the heroic warrior. "Reading between the lines allows you to see something other than Otello as "the great warrior" that he was," he emphasizes. “We see his last 24 hours of life.  We see the one who once was and the one who is, the poor guy who is breaking into pieces."

Cura gets angry when he recalls that when he presented his Otello in Turin in 1997, "many newspapers wrote that I sang piano because I had no voice. They forgot that when it was necessary to sing loudly, I did.  Maybe they were surprised by my lack of violence," he explained.

His new "bull" is the Teatro Colón, which he promises to ride with the same professionalism with which he does "in any theater in the world," downplaying the importance of his debut here.

But the truth is that with the skin of "Otello" -and just like Tyson- he only thinks of going out to do what he does best and what he likes the most: opera.

"I Am Not a Superman"

Opera Actual

Luis G Iberni

April 1999

Some have wanted to see in José Cura the replacement of the superstar tenors. What is undeniable is that the Argentinean tenor is part of a new generation preparing to inherit divo-ism. Although in Spain Cura is only known by the few who are in contact with the international operatic circuit, this winner of Operalia is one of the artists who has raised the greatest interest in recent times. With a measured career in which he gives up more dates than he accepts and focuses on the dangerous tenor repertoire between spinto and dramatic, Cura talks in this exclusive interview for OPERA ACTUAL about his reality as an artist and as a singer, coinciding with his debut as Otello at the Colón in Buenos Aires and with the appearance of his disc Samson et Dalila.

Opera Actual: Although you have numerous admirers around the world, your name is hardly known in Spain. 

José Cura: That will be fixed very soon, since next October I will debut at the Teatro Real with a new production of Otello. I know that the Madrilenian audience is one of the most demanding right now and for that reason I hope that too many expectations are not raised, since I am not a superman. To introduce myself to those who don’t know me, I am 36 years old and have 24 years of experience in the musical world. I studied guitar, composition, and choral and orchestral conducting.  Professional singing came later.

OA: With such intense training, your approach to the opera will be different from other singers...

JC:  Undoubtedly. I have a great advantage, because it gives me the possibility to face the repertoire with a broader perspective and I can make a more thorough analysis of the score as a whole. Actually, my professional aspiration was going this way. But my teacher told me that it would be useful to know the technique of singing for working with interpreters. I started and here I am.

Everything is indispensable and nothing is. A career is like a war; it depends on the weapons you use and the way you focus your resources. The physical in a tenor can be positive and negative at the same time. It depends on what kind of roles you face and what approach you give them.

OA:  What is striking is that you have focused your repertoire on the toughest roles, which are usually considered at the end of a career. 

JC:  The problem in my case comes from the fact that my introduction to opera arrived later than usual. I am 36 years old. I find myself with an unusual physical maturity in an artist with a normal career. But I would dare to say that my evolution has been ideal. I understand that I can now tackle Otello without the risks it represents for a 20 year old singer. You have to think that a role with these characteristics implies more problems than purely vocal ones, as long as you have the necessary physical conditions.

OA:  What do you mean? 

JC:  The problem with the characters like Otello and Samson is produced by not knowing how you have to manage the energies to get to the end of the opera, controlling what you have to give of yourself on stage. For the recording, the voice above all has to come out. That’s fundamental. But on stage it is essential to exercise control so what happens to many does not happen to you—you don’t burn out after the first act. The dosage of energy is, in these cases, more important than the voice itself.

OA:   But you do recognize that these roles are very risky. Do you not feel that you are moving too quickly?

JC:  I will answer with a simile. It is always said that a certain amount of cohabitation is desirable before marriage. But if one day the woman of your life appears and you are aware of it, don't you marry her immediately? Or do you prefer to tell her "wait five years for me to get used to the idea." Most likely, she won't look at your face again. In my personal situation, with a very intense musical experience, things are very clear to me. I've done everything, even sweeping the stage. Twenty-four years of patience and hard work. I think I know where I’m going without wanting to give a feeling of impatience.

OA:   In any case, your rise in popularity has been rapid.

JC:  It is the advantage of some contests. But almost every artist with a professional solidity finds a moment when he transforms into a public figure. Opera, however, does not facilitate phenomena like the Spice Girls, with all my respect for the genre they practice. How many years of study did Montserrat Caballe have before she substituted for Marilyn Horne? Many. However, it was only from that moment that she entered the eye of the storm of fame. Popularity comes from a certain point, where it seems that you are suddenly born, without anyone nodding to the professional burden you carry.

OA:   Are competitions and auditions the only vehicles to get into the circuit?

JC:  Of course no one knocks on your door by chance. I know quite a few frustrated musicians, full of resentment because they think they deserve a [better] position and due to many reasons no one discovered them. But they are starting from a dangerous misconception. The bag is very large and no one takes you out if they are not aware you are in it, so it is essential to make noise and move. It is a sign, at least, that you are alive. My theory about this is that even though nothing seems to happen, you never stop making noise until they realize you exist.

OA:   Is it fair to say your career is the result of Operalia?

JC:  No. At the end of 1994, when I won the contest, I had been in the business for three years and CD to my credit.  But Operalia, with a final broadcast to 70 countries, turns a young artist who lives in a restricted circle into someone well known and in whom many theaters are immediately interested. It is really as if after a long pregnancy you give birth.

OA: With you popular impact, through the records, countless Internet pages, and television appearances, it is clear that there is a need for artists with voices.

JC:  Although many people say that there are no artists, that there are no voices, I am of the opinion that this is not true. At a time when the population has increased and we have a greater number of singing students, there is no justification for saying that there are no voices. I rather think that we are facing a lack of singers with charisma. Vocal charisma is what allows someone to stand out, that hides your technical imperfections. In my opinion, that is what is missing.

OA: Why is that?

JC:  Perhaps, to begin with, things are too easy today. It used to take time. Now almost all problems can be solved with a button. But I think that the lack, more than anything, is the product of a social phenomenon. If we do a market analysis, we will see that most of the young artists of greatest importance come from the Third World: Argentina, Chile, Mexico, South Africa or Korea. There, to stand out, you need enormous willpower because everything is, in the socio-artistic sphere, much more difficult. Comparatively, here in Europe the technical means are greater, and that makes personalities develop less, because everything in the First World is too easy. Just look at the invasion of singers from the former Soviet Union.  Many are good because they have grown and endured against all odds. I do not want to be misunderstood, but perhaps it is an attempt to explain something difficult to understand.

OA: There is no doubt that today's singers have a greater sensitivity both with regard to dramatic and stylistic problems. How do you deal with the latter?

Local Hero:  José Cura

Classic FM
 

The headline in the newspaper says it all. 'LA LO-CURA!' it shrieks in big black letters in a deliberate play on locura (the Spanish word for 'madness') and the surname of the biggest star to come out of Argentina since footballer Diego Maradona. José Cura, the tenor, is back in town, and you'd have to be deaf, blind, and somewhat unobservant not to notice.

The idea dreamed up by his record company seemed simple enough: ease him into his debut appearance as Verdi's Otello at the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, by taking him to his home town of Rosario to give a concert and spend time with his friends and family. It was meant to be a low-key affair, but then the media found out about it.

I join the throng in Buenos Aires and wait to get this new star's story - his desire to stay in touch with his roots, his accelerating career and the pressures of international fame. But from the moment Cura steps off the plane, a frenzy envelops him. His entourage is besieged by television crews from around the globe, including one from The South Bank Show. His gala concert is then mobbed by 40,000 adoring fans. Psychologically unprepared for such attention, Cura is left in a state of exhaustion and, reeling from the publicity onslaught, cancels all his appointments - including my interview - for the next 48 hours to recuperate.

It is hardly a surprise that José Cura's professional schedule has suddenly gone ballistic. The opera world has long been waiting for a new young tenor who not only possesses a voice of heroic proportions but has the physique to go with it. Cura clearly fits the bill. He is a superb musician, a fine actor and, crucially in these days of under-nourished 'studio voices', one of the very few singers around who can - as opera critic Rupert Christiansen nicely puts it - "raise the roof".

Cura's arrival on the international scene in the early 1990s sparked off a fiercely contested debate about the elusive 'fourth tenor' who would succeed the Olympian but ageing triumvirate of Domingo, Pavarotti and Carreras - the other pretender to the throne being Roberto Alagna.

Born into a musical family, Cura showed early promise as guitarist and pianist, came to opera relatively late, at 21, and a professional career even later, making his debut at the relatively advanced age of 29. His career, though short, has been meteoric, helped along by his success five years ago in Plácido Domingo's Operalia competition in Mexico - an entrée to the world's great opera houses. In only a few years Cura has learned more than 30 different operatic roles, almost all of them Italian and French because he refuses to sing in a language he cannot speak fluently.

Meanwhile his image has been bolstered by his life outside music: a passion for body building, an abandoned career as a rugby prop forward, and a black belt in kung fu. He has worked as a stagehand, a lighting man and a set builder. Seeing him on stage in the summer of 1999 in Verdi's Aida - the opening production of the Arena di Verona season - brought home to me how crucial Cura's athleticism is to his art. As Radamès he displayed the energy of a rock star, running from end to end of the enormous stage, parading his musculature at every opportunity and, in the opera's more lyrical moments, wringing every ounce of character from the role.

In Buenos Aires, Cura's imminent debut appearance as Otello at the Teatro Colón is an opportunity for me to clinch the long-awaited interview. Despite his evident nerves, and the chaos surrounding the dress-rehearsal, he turns in a performance that, vocally and dramatically, more than lives up to expectations - particularly strong on Otello's tortuous see-sawing between outward aggression and inward angst.

Hoping to snatch a few words with the tenor after the rehearsal, I wait amid a gaggle of admirers at the stage door. Here I met Jane Austin, founder of the internet-based club International José Cura ConneXion. Jane has been smitten with the man ever since she saw him sing the title role in Stiffelio in London in 1995. Indeed, she knows more about Cura than anyone - perhaps even more than the tenor himself: she tells me that, on the video he made of Otello in Turin, he leaves a smudge of brown make-up on Desdemona's forehead when he kisses her.

She also knows that, when José - it is always "José" to her - emerges from the stage door, wherever in the world it happens to be, he always finds time for a few words with her. Grabbing my arm as the crowd presses forward, Jane pulls me towards a tall, swarthy figure in an expensive-looking designer coat. He shakes my hand, says "Nice to meet you" in a strong Spanish accent while looking over my shoulder, then moves on to give a big bear-hug to an old friend.

The following morning, just as I think my chances of an interview have slipped away, the phone rings. Señor Cura will give me 25 minutes, but it's now or never. I find him in his hotel room, sinking low in an armchair in jeans and T-shirt while his wife, Silvia, attends to the phone - by the sound of it, fending off more requests for interviews.

"It's a crazy time, you know," the tired tenor said with the weariest of apologetic smiles. "When you are 'missing' for five years and all of a sudden you return to Argentina as a 'somebody' everybody wants to be there, everybody wants you in their newspaper, on their TV, in their magazine." Close up, I can see why we all want him. With his athletic, muscular build, high forehead and noble Roman nose bisecting a pair of dark, angry eyes, he corresponds perfectly to the romantic notion of what a young operatic tenor ought to look like.

In a recent review, The Times opera critic Rodney Milnes wrote that Cura should decide once and for all whether he wants to be a singer or a sex-symbol, apparently sending the singer into a fuming rage. The Independent on Sunday labelled him "an opera singer with a six-pack". To Cura, the physical nature of his work is just as important as the drama and music. "For me the body is essential. If you're an actor, which I am, the body is the instrument of your interpretation. The better you are physically, the better you will sound. Today if you are good-looking people think you are stupid, and if you are a genius you are ugly, dirty and wear glasses. Why can't we combine good looks with intelligence?"

Cura prides himself on his physique and has a personal gym at his Madrid home, although he admits that the demands of fame and the passing of the years are beginning to interfere more than he would like. "I'm not as fit as I was when I was a semi-professional athlete and weighed 20kg less than I do now. I try to live in a more or less balanced way, but when you are invited every day to a cocktail party or a dinner, and to this and that, then it becomes very complicated. Especially now that I'm close to my forties. The body changes, the bones change, and I'm losing my hair like everybody else!"

The question of age is an inevitable one for Cura, not least because in singing terms he was a late starter. But while his peers spent their twenties in the relentless pursuit of vocal perfection, Cura was doing other things. Singing, yes, but singing Beatles songs, Palestrina, spirituals, jazz - everything and anything, except opera. "The first time I opened my mouth to sing something that was more or less opera, I was 21. I didn't like it, so I gave it up. I didn't start again until I was 26."

Cura feels his unusual vocal education has helped him become the well-rounded, mature musician he is today. "It was a normal development, a normal way of arriving at my actual situation. I'm happy that I started my singing career at 26, and the big career at 31. Because at that age you are still young enough to justify all the investment and the hype, but you are old enough to be able to control it."

He has, it seems, got it all under control. Everything he did before the career kicked in, from sport to stage management, turns out to have had its raison d'être. Having worked as a lighting man, he knows where to position himself under the spotlight for maximum dramatic effect. Being an experienced conductor, he understands what conductors require of him. "If you want to be a complete artist these days," he reasons, "you have to master at least three or four different disciplines. Then you can be much more at ease in what you do."

Of all the other strings to Cura's broad bow, the one that interests him most is conducting. He has already started scaling down his vocal commitments so that by 2003, if all goes according to plan, he will be spending half his time singing, and half in front of an orchestra. He tells me this with a pensive seriousness, which suggests perhaps the decision is partly a response to the extraordinary pressures he has recently been facing as a tenor. "My schedule is booked up until 2005. But I am clearing out periods for myself for composition and for conducting. I have already conducted on Anhelo, my CD of Argentinian songs, and now I am starting to receive proposals from orchestras. Next year I want to do a symphonic record."

Any idea yet of the content? "Yes, but I'd prefer not to say. It might spoil the surprise," he says, his earnest demeanour immediately melting into a lighthearted smile. In Cura's current situation, it can't always be easy to keep seriousness at bay. But his life seems rich and varied enough to stop him losing touch entirely with reality. He also has a secret weapon that keeps him grounded. His family. He and his wife now have three young children - José Ben, Yasmine and Nicólas. Gesturing across the hotel room to where Silvia, her long brown hair hanging down to her waist, stands beside the window clutching a clipboard and a mobile phone, he says, as much to himself as to me: "The family base is so important. It's the only way to keep yourself sane as a human being. I mean, this life is very - no, it's absolutely - crazy. When you come off from a performance where there's a standing ovation and the crowd shouting 'Cu-ra! Cu-ra! Cu-ra!', and then you go home and have to change the baby's nappies, you learn to say, 'OK, the opera was fine, but this is fine, too'. That helps me keep my feet on the ground."

Note:  This is a machine-based translation.  We offer it only a a general guide but it should not be considered definitive.

A Return Following Bumps

GaceNet/TEMA

April 1999

Rosario's tenor José Cura will make his debut in Argentina as the protagonist in Otello at the Teatro Colón. The singer is recognized in the international artistic environment

Buenos Aires.  "I left Argentina beaten because, as the Bible says: 'no one is a prophet in their land.' But now I return with the bumps healed and with no intention of returning the blows I received," said the excellent Rosario tenor José Cura, internationally recognized but almost ignored in Argentina, who will make his debut as the protagonist in Otello at the Teatro Colón.

The singer, composer and conductor, born on December 5, 1962, settled in Europe in 1991 and built a solid career in opera without going through the Colón. José Cura considered that he reached the national stage "at the right time" because "three years ago it might have been premature and two years ago I didn’t have the appropriate repertoire."

He also emphasized his own style that places him more as an actor who sings rather than as a singer who acts. "I never understood why to be dramatic you have to shout and why to be romantic you have to sing softly," he said.

Cura adhered to the theory of good music without distinction of genres or origins and advanced: "it is possible that you will hear me singing symphonic versions of great boleros. Twenty-five years after the Malvinas war, I want to present live a requiem mass that I wrote and that I intentionally composed for two choirs, as if to be performed by an Argentine and a British choir," he concluded.

Note:  This is a machine-based translation.  We offer it only a a general guide but it should not be considered definitive.

An Old Habit Broken

Clarins

20 April 1999

There are rites and rituals, customs and diverse uses.  What was missing during the evening’s performance was the appearance of the performers at the end of each of the first three acts of Otello, as if there was a conspiracy to ignore the traditional applause, of which much more was expected than the eventual—and unjust—booing from an audience that has never spared its support to the artists who cross its stage.  An authority from inside the theater insinuated, without confirming, that it had been José Cura who was responsible for the lack of audience acknowledgement, although the application of the custom, as old as the theater itself, is generally attributed to the stage director.  At the end of the opera it was precisely that régisseur, Beni Montresor, who refused to come out, as if there had been some internal disagreement involving the director in this at least curious episode.  One more thing: in the last 50 years, no one remembers a similar slight, made more peculiar if you consider that all artists love audience recognition.

Stunning Simplicity

Telegraph

Rupert Christiansen

19 May 1999

SOMETIMES I wonder why opera bothers with stage production. For this enthralling concert performance of Verdi's Otello, the soloists simply lined up in front of the orchestra, wearing a variety of evening dress. For the most part, they faced the audience; occasionally they read from their scores. No sets, no lighting, no curtain-up.

But not for a moment did you doubt anyone's intense involvement in their characters, and rarely in a theatre have I felt the drama's emotional essence as powerfully communicated as it was here. Opera singers act so much better when they haven't been fed a lot of half-baked notions by pretentious directors and are allowed to let their interpretations infuse through the music and text unobstructed.

Interest at the Barbican focused on the Argentinian José Cura, taking the title role for the first time in London. He impressed me greatly. Although those of us with memories of Domingo and Vickers may miss the former's eloquent legato or the latter's howling anguish, Cura's young, bold and handsome Otello made its own mark.

His strong, dark, steady tenor lacks colour, but he uses it with musicality and intelligence. There was no recourse to bellowing, and the quiet intensity of Dio mi potevi and Niun mi tema was drawn with real sensibility. He should stop burying his head in his hands to convey despair: more of the finer, deeper points will come with experience.

Cura was fortunate in the cast that framed him. Carlos Alvarez made an impeccably crisp and urbane Iago, more top-hatted gentleman than disgruntled Sergeant-Major, and the pretty Bulgarian soprano Andrea Dankova was an ardent and vocally confident Desdemona - star potential here, I think.

Among the smaller roles only the British tenor John Daszak disappointed, with a tired-sounding Cassio. The London Symphony Chorus would have matched La Scala's in their stunning attack on the opening storm and the Act III ensemble.

Sir Colin Davis conducted. I had forgotten how fast he takes the piece. Detail is occasionally masked, but the dialogues never meander, the temperature never drops, and the climaxes were scorching. The LSO seemed invigorated by his demands and played superbly.

Otello

Metro Live

Warwick Thomson

May 1999

José Cura’s concert performance of Otello, continuing tonight and Sunday, must be one of the most passionate and focused pieces of music/drama in London at the moment.  He has a voice teetering on the verge of breathtaking greatness and a mesmerizing stage presence. 

He used to be a rugby prop forward and semi-pro athlete and carefully places his gestures so that the overall impression is one of immense power.  Yet he is also capable of exquisite tenederness00the love duet with Desdemona is ravishingly delicate. 

His use of South American ‘son’ techniques—the kind of plaintive singing heard in tango music—will offend purists, no doubt;  but the incorporation of these lilting, sobbing sounds into this Italian opera convey a powerful sense of Otello’s cultural difference. 

The London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Colin Davis played superbly on Monday but occasionally overwhelmed Cura:  mere horsepower, however, is something he will undoubtedly gain with age.  Greatness is already his.

A Commanding Otello

The Guardian

James Naughtie

May 1999

The problem with being an international tenor of promising stature at this moment is that the dreadful question is asked everywhere:  “Is this the fourth?”

But José Cura, the relatively young Argentinian singer, wears that millstone reasonably lightly.  His may not be a voice for the Millennium, and it may not prove to be one that lasts for a generation, but it is a formidable instrument.

In his concert performances in the title role of Verdi’s Otello in London last week with Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra he was spared the harsh light which staging would have cost on his thespian abilities, and his voice shone. 

With the promising soprano, Andrea Denkova, beside him and an extremely vigorous sounding Carlos Alvarez as Iago, he turned in performance of real style.

This is a part, of course, which became the property of Placido Domingo in the Eighties.  Cura has none of that burnished depth to his voice yet, though its silkiness showed there is much more richness to come, and he does not yet have the command across his range that the role requires when it is being performed against such majestic forces as the LSO mustered at the Barbican.  But it was good, maybe very good, indeed.

Cura is showing unfortunate signs of being diverted into silliness, as the effort to conduct and sing at his own gala earlier this year demonstrated.  Everyone should hope that the myriad temptations down this road are resisted.  He sings well.  He seems to feel Verdi in him and we should hope that the new Covent Garden has him well placed in its roster.

Once again, Colin Davis demonstrated his undiminished boyish enthusiasm for scores like this, leading his orchestra with punch and verve from the first crashing sounds of the waves on the Cypriot shore.  With Cura’s opening “Esultate!” ringing out in promising fashion, it was clear that this was a performance, and a performer, which would rise well above the ordinary.  The question now is whether it is a performer who will grow. 

If he does, we will all come to know him well.  If not, the tragedy is he will be described as another fourth tenor who never was.  He deserves much better.

Insult to Verdi

The Times

Rodney Milnes

19 May 1999

It’s time to start debating precisely what a concert performance should be, and whatever answer is reached, it will not be what happened at the LSO’s performance of Otello on Monday.  Despite a handful or excellent individual performances, much exciting orchestral playing—though  the LSO’s somewhat aggressive ‘brightness” of sound can grow a little wearing—and Colin Davis at his most genial really sculpting the long-breathed tunes and discreetly urging the dram on, this was not in any sense a serious occasion. 

To act, or not to act, or rather “act”?  Some did, others restricted themselves to frowning and looking vaguely thoughtful.  The playing area was to the left of the platform, and since the chief “actor” and star of the shoe, José Cura, took centre stage, he frequently turned his back on a large section of the audience.  To have scores or not to have scores?  Cura did both, but continued to “act” while turning pages.

You can’t murder someone in bed on the concert stage and then commit suicide:  what happened in the fourth act was simply ludicrous, Desdemona turning her back and drooping, Otello doing some heavy breathing.  The worst of both worlds, then, a quarter-cock dramatic version without the advantages of a really carefully prepared musical performance.  Cura’s “acting” was restricted to stock tenorial posturing, much beetle-browed smouldering and careful presentation of his famous left profile.  Verdi’s Otello?  Forget it.  The man’s vanity is in danger of making him the laughing stock of the operatic world, and in failing to decide whether to pursue a career as a singer or a sex-object, he is short-changing fans on both counts.

Which is a tragic waste.  He is prodigiously gifted, and there were moments of imaginative, insightful singing, especially in the third-act Monologue, but they sat check-by-jowl with the sort of brash phrasing better suited to Pagliacci than Otello.  So Carlos Alvarez, wh stood, sang Iago’s music with beautifully focused, inky tones and projected Boito’s text with real understanding, walked away with the show with—given a pale, edgy-voiced Desdemona—a little competition for Enkelejda Shkosa’s spunky Emilia.

An interval announcement reminded us to go and buy Cura’s CDs from the merchandising point.  For heaven’s sake, were we in a concert hall or a supermarket?

Going Solo:  José Cura

A Moor for the Millennium

 M. Pappenheim

LSO Living Music

1999

In May, José Cura sings the title role in Verdi’s Otello in three concert performances with the LSO.  The Argentinian tenor tells Mark Papenheim about the challenges of a part most singers leave until later in their careers.

Whatever you do, don’t suggest to José Cura that he is just an opera singer—or that his career has been a classic case of overnight success.  “I don’t consider myself to be just a tenor,” he insists, “I consider myself to be an artist who happens to sing, which is different...an artist who can also conduct and compose and take wonderful pictures if he wants to.  I’ve been preparing myself to be what I am today since I first went on stage at the age of 12.  That makes 24 years of hard work.  I don’t think anyone can call that too quick.” 

It is true he combines singing with conducting and composing—his second recital disc, Anhelo, a soulful collection of Argentinian songs, includes two of his own.  He has also been a semi-pro athlete, rugby prop-forward, bodybuilder and Kung Fu black belt.  But it still seems little short of miraculous that, at just 36 and only five years after singing his first major part in a standard repertory work, Cura has already notched up another 25 starring roles and sung in most of the world’s leading theatres, from Covent Garden to Chicago, via Paris, Vienna and Milan.  The statistics sound even more amazing when you consider that Cura had never seen an opera before he sang in one himself at the age of 22.  The opera was Massenet’s Manon, performed at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aries.  As one of two croupiers in the Act 4 gambling scene, all Cura had to sing was the phrase “Faites vos jeux, messieurs! Faites vos Jeux!” (“Place your bets, gentlemen!  Place your bets!”)  How many of those present, I wonder, would have bet money on his chances of returning to the Teatro Colon this April to star as Verdi’s Otello - - probably the most challenging and coveted part in the entire heroic tenor repertoire?

Even four years ago, when Cura made his sensational London debut with the Royal Opera as Verdi’s Stiffelio—taking over from José Carreras a part he would later pass on to Plácido Domingo—I felt I was sticking my neck out as a music critic when I called him “an Otello in waiting.”  Yet so carefully, so confidently planned was the course of his ‘overnight’ career that, even then, Cure knew would return to London this May to sing Verdi’s Moor in concert with Sir Colin Davis and the LSO.

It was to have been his first attempt at the tenorial Everest, “in concert, nice and cool and easy, with the score in front of me, without risk.”  But, two years ago, Cura received an offer he simple could not refuse:  to sing his first Otello on stage, with the Berlin Philharmonic—under Claudio Abbado, no less—for just two performances in Turin.  After much soul-searching he accepted, but with one condition:  that he would sing just the two performances and not touch the part again until 1999, “so as to keep on growing, technically, as an artist and as an actor.”  Despite the avalanche of faxes which arrived the morning after, the worldwide offers that could have kept him singing nothing but Otellos for the rest of his days, Cura stuck to his guns.

Not that the reception was entirely uncritical.  The Italian national daily La Nazion may have headlined its review “A new Otello is born,” but some aficionados thought him too young for the part.  Yes, the optimum age for a tenor to sing Otello may be 45-50, but this way, when he reaches his prime, he will already have more than 10 years’ experience under his belt.  And anyway, Domingo, Vickers and Vinay all sang their first Moors in their thirties.  As for it being undersung, “I can be as loud as I want if I have to.  But I don’t think shouting is the solution to performing this role.”

In fact, the review he liked best was the one that said:  “Cura’s Otello owes more to Orson Welles than to Mario del Monaco.”  That sums up what he was trying to achieve, he says:  his ‘modern vision’ of a bel canto (rather than verismo) Otello—‘based as much on the Shakespeare play as on the Verdi opera, in terms of trying to recreate the last 24 hours of somebody who used to be a hero but is now breaking into pieces.”  If that annoys ‘conservatives,’ so be it.  “When you make art, you break some rules,” he says.  “I think that any artist who makes everybody happy should be very worried, because that means he’s not original.”

As for being called ‘The Fourth Tenor,’ Cura admits the title used to upset him.  “They are the old generation—a wonderful old generation—but we are the new.  Only time will tell what number we will be.”  In the meantime, the LSO can take credit for offering him his first bite at what looks like being the definitive Otello for the start of the third millennium.

José Cura

Opera

October 1999

John Allison

(excerpts)

Some artists read their reviews, some don’t.  Others say they never do.  But few are more ready or able to quote notices than José Cura.  Do you know – or care – who coined the phrase ‘Fourth Tenor’?  According to Cura, it was Alexander Waugh in the Evening Standard, and there were many more such citations during our first meeting in Palermo 18 months ago.  The occasion was the re-opening (after a quarter-century of Mafia-style delays) of the Sicilian capital’s magnificent Teatro Massimo.  On one hand the 36-year-old Argentinian tenor believes that openness between artist and critics can lead only to understanding on both sides, and he is genuinely interested in what is written about him, taking note of constructive criticism; on the other he gives the impression of enjoying all the publicity.  There’s an awful lot of it about this month – not only the new verismo album from Erato but also a South Bank Show television profile on October 17.  Er, and an article in OPERA. 

There is no point in criticizing the marketing people for capitalizing on his Latin looks – that’s the way of the world.  Nor is most of the hype unjustified.  Cura is one of the most exciting talents to have emerged in the ‘90s, especially tenor talents, where the ranks are not exactly swelling.  In the wake of the Three Pensioners, the main contenders for traditional tenor stardom also include Roberto Alagna, Marcelo Alvarez and Ramon Vargas (perhaps the most refined stylist of the lot, but a Donizettian rather than Verdian).  Cura, the most rounded musician of them all, has never been a lyric tenor, and is already proving most impressive in some of the heavier French and Italian repertory; with his dark-toned spinto voice it is not surprising that he has been marked out as the inheritor of Domingo’s mantle, even if he lacks the stylistic finesse the Spaniard had in his prime.

Some have even suggested that we have another Mario Del Monaco in the making – though not many of the Italian critics.  Until the recent concert performances at Otello with the London Symphony that so divided the British reviewers (Richard Fairman wrote in the Financial Times that he ‘set the drama alight…living the role as if on stage, while everybody else was giving a well-behaved concert performance’, while Rodney Milnes countered in the Times, ‘The man’s vanity is in danger of making him the laughing stock of the operatic world, and in failing to decide whether to pursue a career as a singer or a sex-object, he is short-changing fans on both counts’), Cura’s sternest critics were the Italians, fond of finding technical fault.  ‘Maybe there’s a bit of jealously now that they don’t have a “first international tenor”,’ he says.  ‘Some people attack me for not being Italian, others recognize that artists have no nationality, that we are artists first of all.  Some are trying to make the world believe that Bocelli is the best Italian tenor.  It’s a commercial situation, a desperate attempt to have somebody in the race.’

[...]

And what of Otello, its low tessitura and draining emotions?  ‘The difficulty’s not in the tessitura.  Because it’s written in a declamatory way it makes for extra fatigue on the vocal chords.  You have to articulate more, not just sing legato.  And late Verdi is always heavily orchestrated.  Its difficult with less good orchestras – you’re either up against a big noise or, in the pianissimo passages, singing without any sustaining help.’  And what of the opening, going on cold?  ‘The danger’s not vocal!  Yes, it’s hard, but the really hard thing is that Verdi prepares Otello’s entrance in such an enormous way – when you get there you are already over-stimulated, and liable to over-sing.  That’s the biggest risk of the “Esultate!” – you need to keep a cool mind when you hear all the fanfares.  But you also can’t sing it too softly – otherwise for the listeners, who’ve just been pounded by chorus and orchestra, it would be like having just seen a bright light and being blind for a few seconds.  And you have to save yourself for the draining end, which is tragic.  By the end of Samson, even if you die you’ve won.  At the end of Tosca at least you die heroically.  But at the end of Otello you die in misery, like a worm – you’ve been ruined in the last 24 hours of your life.  You’re a victim of racism, classism, jealousy – but it’s not straightforward jealousy like in conventional operas.  You’ve killed the person you love the most in the world.’ 

Cura’s strong stage presence would make him a natural in most of the verismo parts he has been exploring for his new recording, but how does he feel about the music itself?  ‘No single piece of verismo is a real masterpiece from beginning to end.  You have to accept that, in contrast to Otello, where there’s not a single note out of place, Pagliacci has wonderful music, but a few pages you’d like to cut.  In Fedora, Giordano wrote some wonderful pages, but there are many you’d like to burn!  The mistake is to take the snobbish side, saying it’s all rubbish.  It was an attempt to get away from old operatic clichés, and as in all new movements there were both good and bad things.’ 

Time has come for the tenor to take stock, and apart from Don Carlos in Zurich in 2001, few new roles are in the diary.  ‘I need a couple of years to think.  I’ve done 25 new roles in three-and-a-half years, so now I need to decide which to keep and develop for my career, and which I’ll drop or reserve just for special occasions.  After the pressure of 25 roles, I need to give myself space to mature – I’ve been prepared as I can be for my important debuts, but I know that I’m only beginning with those roles.  The ones I really love – Cavaradossi, Otello, Samson, Radames, Don José, that kind of thing – I’ll take further, not only vocally, but to explore their psychology.  I think that ultimately one new role a year would be very healthy, and, having done most of the obvious French and Italian parts, I’m looking for something new.  Peter Grimes perhaps.  I’d like to dig into rare things, and find out what I could do with La Juive, for example, or Meyerbeer.  Maybe I’ll do a more dramatic version of Werther – we’re used to lyric singers like Kraus and Alagna, but I’m sure another kind of reading is possible.  De Reszke sang it, and he was also an Otello and Samson, so maybe I’m not too far from Massenet’s ideal.’  

Domingo once said that a star wasn’t born but made by the public.  Cura, ever-sensitive to comparisons with some colleagues, would rather stress his long-standing credentials.  ‘A career is like an iceberg, most of it under water.  You have to have a solid base, but if you are lucky enough a big career develops.  No good careers are really sudden.  It’s two or three years since the world has known about José Cura, but there were another 20 before that.  I wasn’t invented by the media or my record company.  I’m the result of hard work and that makes me feel comfortable.’

Otello, Madrid, November 1999:  “José Cura has, to begin, a color of voice, dark and noble, very adapted for the role; his singing volume is sufficient and his appearance fits very well with a vision of a youthful and vigorous mercenary who is passionately in love with his Desdemona.”  El Mundo, 24 November 1999 

Otello, Madrid, November 1999:  “Bruson and Cura Captivate the Audience at the Teatro Real.  On (opening night) Cura was nervous but by the second performance, the nerves turned into security and good work. Cura and Bruson had to step in front of the curtains to greet audience, so great was the jubilation…”  Estrella, November 1999

Otello, Madrid, November 1999:  “José Cura has a dark and noble voice color, very suitable for the character; his sound volume is sufficient, and his stage presence fits very well with a strong and youthful vision of a brave mercenary who loves his Desdemona with passion.  However, his limited vocal power makes him, rightly, opt for a more introverted and intimate view of a character who is often stentorian and enraged. A certain and indefinable theatrical instinct is noted, an ability that seems natural to attract the spectator's attention when he is on stage. However, his Otello is incomplete, irregular, since next to great expressive discoveries there are anodyne moments that lack dramatic credibility. Sometimes he colors his voice appropriately and obtains moving effects, but on the whole his interpretation can and should improve a lot with the passing of time and with the help of stage and musical directors who can help him to shape and mature what today is a characterization, both vocally and dramatically, clearly unfinished, closer to the verista archetype than to the tragic and pathetic figure of the Verdi hero, full of artistic and human truth. And although at this point in his career the technical aspects do not seem to affect him too much, he should not neglect the work necessary to complete his technical skills, since in time his tendency to be carried away by his instinct and imagination rather than by reflection and control of his artistic resources when he approaches a character like this one, can take its toll.”  Mundo Clasico, 24 November 1999

A More Intimate and Heartfelt Latin Otello

El Mundo

Natalia Lago

27 October 1999

The tenor José Cura makes his debut in Spain, at the Teatro Real, with Verdi's opera

MADRID - He is fulfilling his to the management team of the Teatro Real and making his debut in Spain at the Madrid Coliseum. He is open, passionate, talks a lot and his first meeting with the Spanish press amused him so much that he couldn't find the time to get back into Otello's shoes.

[Otello is] a character for whom José Cura believes that he is vocally prepared, despite his youth (he turns 37 in December) and the difficulty.  “I have the necessary vocal potential. And since it takes at least 10 years to create this role, now is the time to do it. I will make a different Otello, more intimate, more meaningful, without ever thinking that it sounds like Plácido Domingo's or other great figures. My Otello is being created and I don't know what will come out tomorrow or the day after.

He considers that age is important at the time of being on stage. “It is fundamental in complicated roles like this one to know if you should put all your meat on the grill.  It's artistic wisdom.  But, of course, if you don't have a voice, no matter how much experience you have ...”

José Cura confesses that he has been on stage for 25 years, although he has been known for much less time.  He was launched as a result of the contest organized by Plácido Domingo, Operalia, which he won in 1994.  Since then he has become one of the most internationally renowned figures for the next century.

The tenor, who in this co-production of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London, conducted by Maestro García Navarro, shares the bill with veteran Renato Bruson (Iago) and soprano Elena Prokina (Desdemona), who replaced Carla María Izzo who had to withdraw after developing flu-like symptoms, does not consider himself a good actor.  “If I did, I would be a moron. I prefer to say that I am an actor who sings rather than a singer who tries to act. I will never transform myself into a note-producing machine. And I will never achieve a perfection in them that prevents me from missing any. I put as much emphasis on stage credibility as on vocal. It is my personal quest.”

Complementing the career

Born in Rosario (Argentina) of a Spanish mother and grandfather, he sings, conducts and composes. He is a versatile artist who does not seem to want to waste a minute. For José Cura, this diversification is part of the same career.  “It completes it to become an artist of integrity and to keep me alive. You spend your life dreaming. When the time comes and you are asked to make it happen, why would you say no?   Some will think that I am presumptuous but these are dreams come true with quality and with a professional background. They are not whims.”

What he most wants is to be able to reconcile his professional life with his private life. "When you miss the baptism of one child and the first communion of another, you remember it and cry." Now his dream is to live in Madrid, where he has already signed with the Teatro Real to perform in a production every year. The next ones will be Il trovatore and Cavalleria rusticana.

 José Cura is not comfortable with the reputation as sex symbol that he has been given because he fears that his physical appearance will eclipse what is truly important: his work. Nevertheless, he admits that he is flattered by it.  "It's incredible that they say that when only my wife knows me in private," he explains with a laugh.

Then he recovers his seriousness and focuses on his next role, Alfredo in La Traviata, conducted by Zubin Mehta. "But it is clear that it will not sound like we are used to, it will be more believable and never dark." He will begin to prepare it as soon as Friday's premiere at the Real passes and he has finished with his particular struggle: to represent a different Otello, "neither dramatic nor heroic but pathetic."

Note:  This is a machine-based translation.  We offer it only a a general guide but it should not be considered definitive.

Otello: Bruson and Cura Captivate the Audience at the Teatro Real

Estrella

Angel Munoz

November 1999

[Excerpt]

"I believe that a just man is only a hypocritical buffoon. I believe man a plaything of wicked fate. Heaven is but an old tale." This is how Iago, the villain from Verdi's Otello, expresses himself, masterfully interpreted by the baritone Renato Bruson. His voice and performance is what most captivated the audience in Teatro Real in this Shakespearean tale of jealousy and human manipulation through defamation, one of the most effective tools to destroy lives today and forever.

The pairing with José Cura, the Argentine tenor to whom they want to put the stamp of 'successor' of Plácido Domingo, is by far the best aspect of this opera, in which Desdemona, performed by the soprano Elana Prokina is a bit dull, without character, almost in continuous prayer, although with great musicality in her role as a mistreated wife unjustly accused of infidelity.

For José Cura and Renato Bruson this is their first time at the Teatro Real. Cura, who intends to make his permanent residence in Spain, had promised this appearance in Madrid to his friend García Navarro. The great tenor has also signed a contract for Il trovatore and it is expected that he will commit himself to the operas Pagliacci, Andrea Chenier and Cavalleria rusticana, the latter title that has spread much of his world fame.

As for the review of the first performance—on Friday (opening night) Cura was nervous and somewhat out of tempo at times. By the second, on Tuesday, the nerves turned into security and good work. Cura and Bruson had to go out to say hello between acts because of the excitement of the audience. The jubilation was so great that some loudly criticized the 'excess' of applause at the moment when the director Garcia Navarro greeted the audience at the beginning of Act III. The artistic and musical director of the Madrid opera temple seems to have some bitter enemies among a small part of the public.

Our First Opera Ever

Our First Otello

First Meeting with José Cura

The Two Fine Voices Of Otello

By Philip Kennicott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 3, 2000

[Excerpt]

The popular Argentine tenor Jose Cura sang Verdi's  Otello on Wednesday night with the man who has defined the role for a quarter-century staring him down from the orchestra pit. Placido Domingo, one of the greatest Otellos of the century, was conducting the work for the first time at the Kennedy Center Opera House. Cura, onstage, was doing the equivalent of playing Hamlet for Sir Laurence Olivier. The Washington Opera production, which is steadfastly traditional, was enlivened by the drama of watching a torch being passed.

No artist should be heard only in comparison to another. Cura has wisely decided to stand aside from Domingo's long shadow. Domingo returned Verdi's Otello to its precedent and inspiration, Shakespeare's Othello, concentrating on the title character's almost abstract progression through the stages of doubt, jealousy and rage. It was the slow dismantling of a statue, from the opening clarion call of "Esultate!" to the final, unfinished whisper, asking for one more kiss . . . "un altro bacia . . ."

Cura takes the role more within the tradition of Italian opera than Shakespeare. On Wednesday, in a production that offers little new, but is technically solid, Cura's Otello was smaller and more given to thoughts of victimhood. One sensed more the pain of a vanishing dream, the sadness of disillusionment, than anger at the destructiveness of Iago. At the moment, in the text, when anger finally wins, Cura's cries for blood--"Sangue! Sangue!"--came from some other place, not rage, not certainty.

Cura's warm but lyrically lighter voice sets natural limits to the heroism of his Otello. He compensates by going further into the more tender dimensions of the role. In the tradition of Italian opera, we expect the tenor's death to be touching, and Cura made it so. But in the tradition of Shakespeare, we expect it to be horrifying, and Cura evaded that dimension. His Otello wants to be loved.

There was enough to like. Cura's voice is attractive and, within its natural compass, effortless and easily produced. He is a musical singer, with a natural sense of phrasing and a tenor's instinct for the drooping, sighing, clinging line. He is more self-consciously an actor than many opera singers, an actor aware of his own glamour and the possibilities it creates for connection to an audience that wants and needs stars.

The new production of "Otello," directed by Sonja Frisell, did not arrive without bumps in the road. The originally scheduled soprano, Daniela Dessi, pulled out on short notice, forcing the company to scramble. It found a replacement in the Chilean soprano Veronica Villarroel, who had only three rehearsals but, with the aid of a prompter, sang with confidence.

Villarroel, who has sung the role of Desdemona only once before (with Cura), has blossomed into a singer who can ramble about comfortably in the large Verdian repertory. Her voice suggests a certain thinness of texture, but is more than ample to be clear and vibrant in large ensembles. In the last act, she sang at a very fine level, sensibly and sensitively. In earlier acts, she seemed a happy exception to this sometimes sedate production; Villarroel was the uncontrollable element, the only singer working in the realm of pure Verdi mania, musically volatile and threatening.

Supporting the hero and his maligned wife were the Iago of baritone Justino Diaz and Iago's wife, Emilia, beautifully sung by Elizabeth Bishop. Diaz is a barker and his Credo, opera's greatest glimpse at pure evil cast in musical garb, was a disappointment.

Domingo, who is building a new career as a conductor, has recognizable, interesting and compelling thoughts about a score he knows extraordinarily well, but the technique is not solid. There were stray players here and there (once, unfortunately, in the finale to Act 3), and passages, especially with chorus in Act 1, when the rhythmic foundation was slippery.

[Excerpt]

WashOp has a new show in town right now—Verdi’s penultimate masterpiece, Otello, which closes the current opera season—and it’s good. It’s good in its own right, and even better in the context of WashOp’s Verdi-challenged history. It should be noted that the company’s difficulties with this 19th-century icon have rarely centered on singing, which has, more often than not, been quite strong. The problem has been one of creating productions that make this most theater-savvy of Italian opera composers look risibly melodramatic and unredeemably old-fashioned—an old fart worth attention merely because he knew how to write a swell tune.

But, like Shakespeare, Verdi could take the dustiest old stories, the most overwrought emotional situations, the least likely relationships, and transform them into works of universality and transcendence and psychological complexity. And when Verdi and the Bard (by way of Arrigo Boito’s literate, sophisticated librettos) came together, the results reached a pinnacle of operatic form. Otello is a melting pot of bel canto lyricism, Wagnerian leitmotif, and Elizabethan poetry. The world it creates is one where private lives are publicly exposed and public lives are destroyed with a word. Verdi was writing at inspirational white heat here, and his grand opera rhetoric is as eloquent as his quietest, inward-looking arias.

The current revival of that infamous production doesn’t begin auspiciously. Cheesy strobe-lightning flashes make all the faux granite in Zack Brown’s set look even more plastic than it is, and the chorus, for all its enthusiastic gnashing of teeth, looks silly under the low-rent meteorology. But as the soloists start getting to work, director Sonja Frisell’s staging takes on some compelling life.

Key to the production’s success is young Argentine tenor superstar José Cura. Cura’s under an unusual level of scrutiny here. This revival, after all, was to have been D.C.’s chance to experience Domingo’s near-definitive Otello in the flesh at long last. So when it became clear that WashOp would remount the opera, but Domingo (who just sang it last fall at the Met) would be retiring the role of Otello moments before our local production opened—choosing instead to conduct the revival—it all seemed like some mean-spirited joke. Casting the young Cura in a role most tenors wait their entire careers before tackling was a controversial move.

But youth has its advantages. Cura’s got runway-model looks, which he exploits in a series of smoldering poses straight out of the International Male catalogue. He’s also got that Latin thing going, which worked well for Domingo and Carreras early in their careers, and never hurts in the leading-man sweepstakes. And you can practically count the number of hours he spends each week at the gym, thanks to what must be the tightest costumes ever worn by an opera singer. (My girlfriend managed to take every conversation we had about Cura’s singing and turn it around to the subject of his thighs, which she was evidently mesmerized by.) Cura achieves what most tenors can’t, even with a battery of corsets and hairpieces: heroic credibility.

Cura’s acting, despite the element of self-regard in some of his antics, is strikingly effective. This Otello’s affection toward Desdemona looks lived-in and genuine. There are an enveloping tenderness and an erotic charge to their relationship that are rarely communicated so well on the opera stage. As his character starts unraveling, Cura creates a canny mix of crushing disappointment and repressed rage that tips over gradually into psychosis. Physical passion is inextricably bound up here with the potential for annihilating (ultimately self-annihilating) violence, and only a creepy, pretty-boy charm stands between impulse and action. To Cura’s credit, he avoids the standard-issue blackface, using his own swarthy complexion to suggest the Arab, rather than the African, side of Otello’s Moorish heritage. And in a nice bit of Shakespearean accuracy, Cura generates a convincing epileptic seizure at the close of Act 3.

Vocally, he’s in much the same form as in WashOp’s Samson et Dalila last season. The dark baritonal timbre is still virile and thrilling, the support sure up and down the wide compass of the role. It’s an instrument capable of conveying dramatic change with great immediacy. If there are any surprises this time around, it’s the way Cura comes off the high notes fairly quickly. Nothing in the sound or production of those notes is strained or awkward—quite the contrary—which suggests that he’s trying to conserve the voice, not just through each performance, but for the long haul. (Otello, after all, is a notorious voice-wrecker.)

Cura is like a panther who’s placed in successively smaller cages as the story progresses…

Cura’s Desdemona, Veronica Villarroel, is the real goods. She’s a genuine Verdi spinto with a middle register like warm caramel, a melancholy cast to the sound that’s tailor-made for tragic heroines, and the ability to float ethereal high notes. Villarroel’s acting is broad, built from a traditional vocabulary of stances and gestures and glances heavenward. But, to her credit, she makes it all look like second nature, and because she believes it, we pretty much believe it, too, and can be moved.

Justino Diaz has been singing Iago for a lot of years now, and his interpretation is an amalgam of naturalistic acting, blank-faced singing, vibrant physicality, stock poses, rote bits of business, verbal subtlety, vocal bluster, and sheer chutzpah. At the opening, he seemed engaged in playing his character only when not singing. His voice was in trouble, with hoarse patches, tired high notes, a lot of uncomfortable sharp singing (no doubt in an effort to avoid even more uncomfortable flat singing), barking attacks, and vocal effects taking the place of a direct response to the text.

Director Frisell creates clear-headed stage business for the singers overall while giving her leads in both casts the freedom to incorporate alternate ideas to make these roles their own.

Domingo has gotten a lot of flack for his journeyman conducting in the past, but I’ve never encountered a Domingo-conducted performance that went seriously off the rails or lacked imaginative interpretive ideas. Ensemble, though, was intermittently sketchy at both performances. Some tricky numbers, like Iago’s drinking song in Act 1, held together well, but the opera’s opening chorus veered dangerously out of sync with the orchestra.

Otello in Munich

Opera News

Jeffrey A Leipsic

October 2000

June 15 brought a rare opera evening that promised much and delivered more.  All three major roles in Verdi’s Otello at the Nationaltheater were cast with singers appearing for the first time with the company. Special interest centered around tenor José Cura in the title role.  It must be admitted that the local public has become suspicious about the “publicity machine” mentality of the major record companies, having been bamboozled once too often by glossy yet empty hype.  Perhaps for that reason, tickets were available up to the last minute.  Besides, Cura had canceled an engagement elsewhere in Europe the week before and, although it was to be his first appearance in Germany, one was not overly optimistic about his turning up at all.

Francesca Zambello’s busy production, much maligned during its first run, in July 1999, began well enough.  The chorus sounded in good form, and the constant activity seemed less superfluous.

Then came Otello’s Esultate, and once could feel the electicity run through the audience, which seemed incredulous as it waited for the love duet before passing judgment.

In between, Sergei Leiferkus steered away from over evil as Iago choosing subtle malevolence instead.  Lieferkus has never met a pure Italian vowel that he couldn’t turn into a Russian-sounding diphthong, but his voice is large, strong, well centered and full of personality.

The ensuing Otello-Desdemona love duet catapulted the performance into another universe.  Cura, a stunning figure of a Moor, linked phrases (no breath between “l’ira immensa” and “vien quest’immenso amor!”), soared as the music moved upward and intoned the final “Venere splende” immaculately while lying on his back, his head in Desdemona’s lap.  Barbara Frittoli, as Desdemona, matched his every achievement.  Her middle register was pure cream, her pianissimos (in “Amen risponda,” for example) were as breathtaking as they were well chosen, and her top notes emerged full and without strain.

The evening moved from one superb scene to the next, with Cura gaining in intensity until his passion totally engulfed the audience.  He seems willing to sacrifice tonal beauty for dramatic fervency, and eventually that may cost him dearly.  For now, his epileptic fit was as credible as his jealous outbursts, and his vocal mastery of the fiendish part was awe –inspiring.  Frittoli’s Ave Maria left hardly a dry eye among the audience, and the crushing drama of the death scene even led to a few seconds of silence after the final curtain.  […]

Otello, Vienna January 2001:  “José Cura, to whom [great] attention had been directed, quickly turned out to be a show master Otello striding across the stage. Cura's voice is not without that certain, hard-to-define something that tenors simply have to have to become popular. It's a matter of timbre and general appearance.  It is - at least with Cura - not a matter of technology. In his "go for it singing" he turns out to be a natural talent.” Operinwein, January 2001

Otello, Vienna January 2001:  “Would Verdi have enjoyed José Cura in the title role?  The demand of the maestro and Cura's own claim that he not scream Otello but sing was undoubtedly met by the Argentine tenor, and in piano and dulce his powerful voice effortlessly filled the Vienna State Opera. But despite a beautiful middle register, which, especially in the duets with Desdemona showed very touching passages and could be very pleasing, his voice often sounded throaty and his tones not very even. Also, his portrayal of Otello, in which he has to be judged by the highlights of others who performed in the Vienna State Opera, is less convincing. The transformation from a victorious, powerful, upright warrior to a broken man who becomes a criminal does not take place with sufficient credibility. But Cura is still at the beginning of his Otello career and subtleties can certainly still be worked out. As for his voice, perhaps there was a certain nervousness on the anniversary of Verdi's death. At the second performance on January 30th, his voice sounded freer and more beautiful.  All in all, two worthy performances of a brilliant work …”  Opera Notes, February 2001

Otello, Vienna January 2001:  “Cura’s large, magnificent voice with its rich, dark colors corresponds almost perfectly to the type of "voce scura" that constitutes the ideal Verdi tenor. This should be no heroic howler monkey, but—particularly in the late operas with their fastidious psychology—one able to draw broken characters.  Cura lo scuro is well on the way there. He also retains the velvety tone in the high notes, manages the shifts in registers smoothly, and has no difficulties with the tessitura of this complicated part. His was an impressive, differentiated performance with a surprising number of soft tones—which, however, was almost overshadowed by a second debut: the Finnish soprano Soile Isokoski as Desdemona. In their performance, vocal culture and emotion combined to create an intelligently structured role design, which culminated in the fourth act in a touching climax.” Salzburger Nachrichten, 29 January 2001

Otello, Vienna January 2001:  “José Cura is, of course, an impressive Otello.  This is because he not only sings but also acts.  That said, acting is almost more difficult than singing in this production in which there is little available for him and his sinister opponent to do beyond wild rolling of eyes and clenching of fists. […]  In the first act, many of his notes sounded as if they were looking for a refuge between head and chest. This somewhat uncertain musical impression was to a great extent neutralized by Cura’s successful effort to portray Otello not as a radiant hero, but with clever psychology as a war weary homecomer.  In the following acts, Cura grew in vocal intensity and tenorial radiance.   One can imagine how well he will play Otello in the future.  Der Standard, 29 January 2001

Otello, Vienna January 2001:  “José Cura has arguably one of his best roles in Otello—he can convince with a brilliant performance but also with many lyrical moments. He is and sings what this Otello must be—a pitiful victim of his love and his folly. How else should you describe jealousy?  There is no doubt that the Haus am Ring, which is not the only institute paying homage to Giuseppe Verdi, is still capable of special evenings.  This special performance, highly acclaimed, made us hear what an opera needs: great singers, a decent conductor and at least one rehearsal.” Kurier, 29 January 2001

Otello, Vienna January 2001:  “José Cura is a brilliantly marketed, but highly one-dimensional singer in his vocal presence, who tries to sing the entire part with one and the same vocal color and who knows only how to differentiate in the final scene by toneless speaking or sobbing.  the duets and scenes between the eponymous hero and his lover remain pale copies of the intense theatrical art of the soul that Verdi was striving for here.”  Die Presse, 29 January 2001

The Suffering of a Young Otello

Der Standard

Ljubisa Tosic

26 January 2001

 José Cura on odor problems and the desire for evil opera characters

The Argentine tenor José Cura has long since achieved pop status. Whether this is justified, of course, will be decided when Cura comes onstage—on Saturday he wants to be convincing as Otello at the State Opera. After the Trovatore disturbance in Madrid, where Cura became a bit offensive after the performance, he is concerned that there might be trouble in Vienna from "guests" from Madrid.

The opportunity to talk to a star singer about the smell of the audience doesn’t happen very often in life.  We want to thank José Cura, one of the few globally active young tenors today, for this opportunity. After all, it was he who recently made it clear on the open stage after a performance in Trovatore in Madrid's Teatro Real that parts of the rowdy audience smelled bad.

At least that's what was reported by the news agencies of the world.  Cura, later scolded by the composer Cristobal Halfter and defended by the Minister of Culture, subsequently apologized for “behaving like a bullfighter.”   He says the displeasure of "a small group of people" had nothing to do with his performance. The evening was recorded, so one can check his performance. And in any case, it all went down a bit differently:

José Cura: "I was told before the performance that some people would target me. It had less to do with me and more to do with the theater. Many singers no longer want to come to Madrid because this kind of thing happens constantly. With every new production. It happened to me for the first time. Besides, I didn't say that parts of the audience stink but that the whole affair stinks."

Der Standard: So you were misunderstood?

José Cura: Yes, certainly!

Der Standard: What a shame.  We thought finally here is a singer who fights back.

José Cura:  Come on, how am I supposed to smell the audience so easily from a distance?

Der Standard:  You can also mean something in a figurative sense.

José Cura:  No, no, these people already have enough publicity! The problem is—and here’s where I ask for your help—yesterday I was informed that some of these people might come to Vienna to disrupt the Otello performance because I challenged them in Madrid! I hope this will not happen. But if i does, I want my Viennese audience to know I understand these reactions are not from them – that’s my message.

Der Standard:  If you continue with your gruff reactions, whether they are odor-related or not, you can secure continuous publicity.  Every month a new headline: "Cura insults the audience again!"

José Cura:  In retrospect, the whole thing may have worked like a marketing action, but it wasn't - I don't do that. There is, especially in the film industry, a favored method of staging and launching private troubles to remain relevant.  That is something I don’t want to subject my wife and three children to—I don't want my children to read about me in newspapers.

Der Standard:  The opera audience is actually the most cruel—there is never booing at concerts.

José Cura:  The opposite of applause should not be booing. It should be silence. Silence would be the right response. Apart from that, one can only hope that people listen intelligently.

Der Standard:  You are marketed as a young tenoral hero. This raises expectations that could get in your way when you try to  create differentiated roles.

José Cura:  True! That's why everyone in Zürich was somewhat surprised by my recent Don Carlos. They wanted the usual Cura, the hero. Instead they got a sickly character, one who is crazy, paranoid and schizophrenic. And they weren't totally satisfied.

Der Standard:  Will they be unsatisfied with Otello on Saturday, too?

José Cura:  We'll see. Even when I don't have a legato voice, even when it's big, it is not going to be really loud. Everyone associates Otello with fortissimo moments. If you study the character, however, you will see that he is loud only three times. And of course you always have to struggle between tradition and your conception. Placido Domingo is naturally the Otello of our day. I'm 38, so I still have many, many years of development ahead of me. But what I have to bring to the role is actually good enough. Otherwise I would not have dared to take on the role at all.

Der Standard: Do you like the evil opera characters more than the good ones?

José Cura:  The problem with the positive guys is that they're generally one-dimensional characters—it’s hard to give them color and depth. For example, I have not yet sung Calaf in Turandot but he is the winner from the start, with no room for development. With the bad guys you can bring out a lot more facets. What I'm afraid of in any opera is the situation of standing on stage and looking ridiculous. If that happens, I'll leave the stage immediately!

Der Standard: When are you coming back to the State Opera?

José Cura:  I will be heard in Pagliacci next year and will be speaking shortly to Director Holender about other projects.

Der Standard: What do you do in Vienna when you are not singing? Shop?

José Cura:  I haven't been shopping since I got married! I just came from Zurich, went to the hotel, and now I'm sitting here! You take the place of my siesta! But don't worry: I never take a siesta!

On the Way to Verdi

Salzburger Nachrichten

Monika Mertl

29 January 2001

[Excerpt]

The 38-year-old José Cura made his debut as Otello in Verdi's opera of the same name

Cura has long been more than just a hope, and his large magnificent voice with its rich, dark colors corresponds almost perfectly to the type of "voce scura" that constitutes the ideal Verdi tenor.  His tenors requires no heroic howler monkey, but—particularly in the late operas with their fastidious psychology—ones able to draw broken characters.

Cura lo scuro is well on the way there. He retains the velvety tone in the high notes, manages the shifts in registers smoothly, and has no difficulties with the tessitura of this complicated part. His was an impressive, differentiated performance with a surprising number of soft tones—which, however, were almost overshadowed by a second debut by the Finnish soprano Soile Isokoski as Desdemona. In their performances, vocal culture and emotion combined to create an intelligently structured role design, which culminated in the fourth act in the touching climax.

It was here that the otherwise gaudy orchestra under Marcello Viotti found more cautious sounds. Certainly a performance that pretends to be a gala should be more than a poorly rehearsed repertoire performance in which there is noticeable wobble between the stage and the pit. The antiquated, superficial staging by Peter Wood, which was presented here for the 64th time, was an almost insulting discrepancy to the immense wealth of Verdi's masterly score.

So whether José Cura is the new Otello of our day will discover only when he has had the opportunity to work out the role vocally and dramatically from scratch.

For José Cura’s Otello:  Cheers instead of Trouble

Der Standard

Peter Vujica

29 January 2001

 [Excerpt]

Vienna.  It is not only announced revolutions which do not take place; fortunately this is also true of announced scandals.  The Spanish enemies of Cura stayed in Madrid.  And they did not miss much—this was no occasion for booing but rather a reason for cheering.  And in that regard, the Viennese Cura enthusiasts performed almost more splendidly than did Cura in his leading role.

José Cura is, of course, an impressive Otello.  This is because he not only sings but also acts.  That said, in this production acting is almost more difficult than singing because there is little available for him and his sinister opponent to do beyond wild rolling of eyes and clenching of fists.

The environment is much better for singing:  there is hardly a conductor nowadays who understands how to help the singers over all the hazards of their roles as does Marcello Viotti. 

This [sensitivity] was helpful even to José Cura.  In the first act, many of his notes sounded as if they were looking for a refuge between head and chest. This somewhat uncertain musical impression was to a great extent neutralized by Cura’s successful effort to portray Otello not as a radiant hero, but with clever psychology as a war weary homecomer.

Yet in the following acts, as the veteran Renato Bruson presented his perfect Iago, Cura grew in vocal intensity and tenorial radiance. 

That this evening turned out to be merely passable but ultimately not great lay in the not very happy casting of Desdemona with Soile Isokoski.  She has lyricism, sincerity and brilliant technique, yet musically and histrionically she lacks dramatic tension. 

And so the final choking and stabbing became detached symbolic actions, for which, according to musical criteria, there is actually little basis.  Therefore, it was not clear why the guest star stepped before the curtain seeming to be visibly exhausted and with a drooping head. 

In any case, one gets a good idea of how well he will play Otello in the future.

One-dimensional Cura: Otello at the State Opera

Die Presse

RED

29 January 2001

Anxious to celebrate the anniversary of Verdi's death, Otello was offered in the Vienna State Opera—and in such a way that the attentive observer would have to worry about the future of the opera. The State Opera called it a festival performance. The audience appears, many still desperately trying to get tickets at the last moment. And then? Then the director gives a short speech to emphasize Giuseppe Verdi's importance for opera life. And a performance of the master’s last great, serious opera takes place, which at no time does justice to the importance of this work.

Why? Because José Cura is a brilliantly marketed, but highly one-dimensional singer in his vocal presence, who tries to sing the entire part with one and the same vocal color and who knows only how to differentiate in the final scene by toneless speaking or sobbing. Because Soile Isokoski has a beautiful soprano voice, but only in the Ave Maria does she use it so carefully that the listener perceives the simplicity as a refined artistry. Incidentally, this Desdemona lacks the possibility of expanding the voice at the decisive moments to create broad, powerfully illuminating melodic arcs. Thus the duets and scenes between the eponymous hero and his lover remain pale copies of the intense theatrical art of the soul that Verdi was striving for here.

In addition, the orchestra under Marcello Viotti is brave at the job but fails to reach top form, just like the singers. Viotti does not succeed in using his organizational talent for poetic mood painting, for intensifying the drama. The large ensemble in the third act threatened to disintegrate irretrievably into its component parts, as if it were exclusively the insignificant background for the intrigues of Iago, whom Renato Bruson no longer shapes in such a finely differentiated manner as before. The rest of the line-up sounds mostly restrained to hoarse.

Conclusion: The Vienna State Opera has engaged some of the most famous names of our time, and the audience’s reaction indicated they consider this a celebration.  For a good opera performance, however, we now know that it is not enough.

Finally a Big Evening in the State Opera on the Anniversary of Verdi's Death

Kurier

Franz Endler

29 January 2001

As crazy as the company may have been to schedule all of Verdi's operas in its repertoire in nearly a month, it has proven to be very instructive and now successful.

Now?

On the 100th anniversary of Verdi's death, Otello was performed in a far from fresh yet passable production by Peter Wood and not only had three excellent soloists been engaged but also a conductor. And he was given two hours to prepare the special evening with his soloists and the orchestra.

You could feel the results of this: Marcello Viotti was not only able to demonstrate the frenzy of the storm at the curtain rising but also during the many, many lyrical moments of the drama. They had agreed beforehand [to the extra time allotted] that was not always possible over the course of the weeks, so this time it was particularly worth highlighting.

In the order of their appearance, the three soloists: Renato Bruson is still the leading Verdi baritone, his Iago always remains elegant, his intrigues never offered in a roaring manner, and he remains confident until the moment when his web of lies is torn apart.

José Cura has arguably one of his best roles in Otello—he can convince with a brilliant performance but also with many lyrical moments. He is and sings what this Otello must be—a pitiful victim of his love and his folly. How else should you describe jealousy?

Soile Isokoski succeeds in making the pale Desdemona, who Verdi only gave music in the last moments, into a magnificent and unforgettable figure. Ms. Isokaski can stand among all the best Desdemonas of the past.

The two debutants—Cura and Isokoski—were marvelously carried on the sound carpet which orchestra of the State Opera spreads out if occasionally.

 So there is no doubt that the Haus am Ring, which is not the only institute paying homage to Giuseppe Verdi, is still capable of special evenings. And that is in part because a conventional staging which, even after 64 performance of Otello, tells the story of love and passion and jealousy and death in a way in which everyone understands.

This special performance, highly acclaimed, made us hear what an opera needs: great singers, a decent conductor and at least one rehearsal.

Magnificent Sound on the 100th Anniversary of death

Opera Notes

Birgit Popp

February 2001

[Excerpt]

Marcello Viotti and the Vienna Philharmonic created a magnificent carpet of sound on the 100th anniversary of Giuseppe Verdi's death and created a sound cloud on which the soloists and the choir could soar: Renato Bruson as a Iago fascinating in his treachery and hypocrisy; Soile Isokoski as a lovely and touching Desdemona; and José Cura as an Otello transforming himself from righteous victor to a broken murderer. The harmony between the orchestra pit and the stage, which had not always existed to this extent during the Verdi weeks, was certainly also due to the orchestral rehearsal that Marcello Viotti had been granted.

[…]

Verdi would certainly have enjoyed Bruson, who followed Boito's and Verdi's personal description: “Iago sees evil in people, in himself.  He does evil for evil's sake. He is a cunning artist. (...)”  Bruson's intelligent character design, his voice guidance, his nobility despite all the treachery and hypocrisy, his brilliant credo captivated and left the audience with a cold shiver. Mercy to anyone who falls into the hands of this 'devil' who nevertheless exudes so much humanity!

Soile Isokoski, who in the past two years has already delighted the Viennese audience as a Jewess (La Juive) in the title role alongside Neil Shicoff, fully internalized her role as virtuous Desdemona, who loved Otello even to the point of death. She sang the Willow Song with great devotion and gentleness. A lovely, touching victim of Otello's jealousy and Jago's devilish intrigues.

Would Verdi have enjoyed José Cura in the title role?  The demand of the maestro and Cura's own claim that the role of Otello must not be screamed bur rather sung was undoubtedly met by the Argentine tenor, and in piano and dulce his powerful voice effortlessly filled the Vienna State Opera. But despite a beautiful middle register, which especially in the duets with Desdemona showed very touching passages and could be very pleasing, his voice often sounded throaty and his tones not very even. Also, his portrayal of Otello, in which he has to be judged by the highlights of others who performed in the Vienna State Opera, is less convincing. The transformation from a victorious, powerful, upright warrior to a broken man who becomes a criminal does not take place with credibility. But Cura is still at the beginning of his Otello career and subtleties can certainly still be worked out. As for his voice, perhaps there was a certain nervousness on the anniversary of Verdi's death. At the second performance on January 30th, his voice sounded freer and more beautiful.

All in all, two worthy performances of a brilliant work that inimitably combines music and drama…

José Cura Showmaster
 

Operinwien

Dominik Troger

January 2001

[Excerpt]

The only boos of the evening were for the director himself, who suddenly stepped in front of the curtains at the start.  The expected announcement of an indisposition turned out to be a five-minute lecture on Verdi's death and its significance for opera.  Only after the director of the house had moved the audience to tears with such things as "300,000 people attended Verdi's funeral ..." could the performance start - and Marcello Viotti on the podium let it go right away!

The excitement in the sold-out house was palpable, the mood having been heated by various newspaper reports. And after the first scene had served for general singing, the first moment of truth was struck with the love duet between Otello and Desdemona. José Cura, to whom all this attention had been directed, quickly turned out to be a show master Otello striding across the stage. But because one could suspect that the Venetian general was in love, it didn’t  really matter in the beginning. Cura's voice is not without that certain, hard-to-define something that tenors simply have to have to become popular. It's a matter of timbre and general appearance. It is - at least with Cura - not a matter of technology. In his "go for it singing" he turns out to be a natural talent. But it was as some had doubted beforehand:  Cura can undoubtedly "sing" this Otello and quite passably if you measure it by the produced notes. The fact is that his technique is unpolished and one has to fear that he will ruin himself within a few years if he continues to sing so expansively.

Especially the comparison with Renato Bruson (Iago) and Soila Isokoski (Desdemona) showed what was dared here. (Yes, why does he do really do this and is already singing Otello?) Renato Bruson is a bit too well-behaved as Iago and only found sharper contours of the character over the course of the evening, but in the end - as you always want to write – he left an excellent impression. Soile Isokoski impressed as a devoted Desdemona and very softly sang the Willow Song, both intimate and restrained, before her bitter end.

Marcello Viotti often did not let go of (too) loud volume and took the Otello very veristically, almost gaudy. In the end, the audience was satisfied, the applause was distributed fairly evenly over the three main performers, and the conductor was also celebrated. All the excitement in the run-up must of course be attributed to a well-oiled PR machinery, and at least in this Cura seems to be world champion.

Note:  This is a machine-based translation.  We offer it only a a general guide but it should not be considered definitive.

Otello must not Explode

Die Welt

Manuel Brug and Peter Schneeberger

29 January 2001

 [Excerpt]

What is left of the Verdi singer: A cloned Callas and a pop tenor

The man is in a bad mood. He wants, says the annoyed tenoral testosterone slinger José Cura, to represent real people, people who love and suffer. Opera has to convey feelings to people again. And in his life, he can only actually create what he can imagine.  José Cura, celebrated as the "tenor of the 21st century," is sitting in the hotel and restlessly shaking his legs. Representatives of his record company whisper at the next table. Of course, Cura, the Argentine tenor with the cheesy Latin lover image, doesn't have much to tell: his career is brand new.

But what can he say? Modern singing careers are calculated according to general staff. Or they never even start. A big concert in the wrong environment is enough to permanently damage the meticulously built image. Or a choleric fit, like the one Cura had recently at a performance of Il trovatore in Madrid, when he wildly called his audience who had dared to booed him names.

The bank account is thick, but the nerves are thin because the classical music market is also being tricked and pushed. And if the "product" then presents himself naked and bare on a stage, many who know only the inflated, often snipped-together voice from the CD recording studio are disappointed.

This is particularly noticeable at the moment, because in the Verdi year, under the sign of the Italian maestro, it is precisely the great Italian sensual voices that are sought after - voices that are now almost non-existent.  Because they aren’t given enough time to develop. And because the audience has lost the ability to listen. The main thing now is to be loud. Even in the worst recordings of her career, when Maria Callas' voice was only a shadow, there was more artistry in her tones than in the acoustic pronouncements of those who followed, who are often replaced by a clever agent, massive marketing talent and good teachers.

Callas' first Verdi album was a fulfillment, a dream of bel canto, truthfulness and magic tones. Her last was a sad farewell. In between, however, lay the delights of vocal art.   As the Romanian Angela Gheorghiu now follows in her footsteps, one hears a beautiful, well-trained voice, but one which certainly lacks empathy and distinctiveness. Each of her Verdi Heroines sounds the same. There are hardly any differences between the bolero of the Norman Renaissance noblewoman Elena from I vespri siciliani and the lament of the ancient Egyptian slave Aida. 

Back to José Cura. In the early nineties he was a nobody. While studying singing, the rugby player earned his bread and butter as a fitness trainer, which is why no serious paper today can resist an ecstatic subordinate sentence about Cura's stunning appearance: José Cura, "the ideal man for public eroticism." The times when tenors could afford to be short and fat are over. What has always boosted sales figures in pop music should finally also make money in the dusty classical music scene:  youthfulness and sex appeal.

José Cura has no problems with that. "Classical music has to convey a lifestyle feeling that fits into this time. That's how the media should create links outside of music," says Chris Roberts, head of classical music at the Universal record company, analyzing this development coolly. Voice acrobatics alone has long since ceased to be a viable option.  "To reach people, we have to present artists in a new environment," explains Roberts.

The blind Andrea Bocelli, the "tenor who makes husbands jealous" (BBC music magazine) also belongs there. His timbre is beautiful, something Jack Mastroianni, the shrewd promoter of Cecila Bartoli, also raves about. "But his technique is mediocre. A good pop singer in the wrong category." Which doesn’t stop a renowned conductor like Zubin Mehta from accompanying him on his Verdi album, which smells of plastic and manipulation. Lots of dull tones. Note: money doesn't stink.

In recent years one often heard the good news: Luciano Pavarotti's successor is born. José Cura has this reputation, even if his Verdi album, on which he conducts himself, proves to be a vocal pipe dream: with no trace of eroticism, he fights his way insensitively through the notes.  But the PR strategy of his competitor Roberto Alagna has also been knitted according to this pattern: his record company aggressively markets him as the "fourth tenor." 

When he made his debut at the Met, the city was littered with posters even in places where classically trained throats are least expected: in subway shafts. Today it has become quieter about the former bearer of hope: "Expectations had been built up that no human being could have fulfilled," says Jack Mastroianni. "If you tell the audience: This is the "fourth tenor," they buy the tickets with the attitude: Okay, prove it to us." But Alagna's Verdi disc, failed. 

Otello, Chatelet, March / April 2001:  "The Otello presented earlier was billed as concert performances, but although there were no sets and costumes, the drama was actually acted out. The Orchestre Philharmonique of Radio France occupied the front of the stage under Myung-Whun Chung's solidly organized direction, and the performers moved on a raised level behind the orchestra, while the chorus behind them was made visible when needed by raising a curtain.   José Cura, without costume or makeup, did not cut a very heroic figure, but he sang the title role with penetrating force. Michaels-Moore was the effective and businesslike Iago, and Karita Mattila was a touching Desdemona, despite having to carry out some uncomfortable stage action."   International Herald / New York Times,  2 May 2001

Otello, Chatelet, March / April 2001: "When a title role as important as Otello is poorly parted, the Verdian undertaking limps along badly. That José Cura plays a particularly extroverted Moor is acceptable, but that he so despises the score is pure scandal.  With a tired voice, tarnished timbre, laborious high notes, Cura falls into the most hackneyed verisimilitude, sobs, screams, never takes into account the value of a note—in short, he does whatever he wants, and his temperament takes the place of talent.  The result: some applause, a few boos, but not the success he had hoped for."   AltaMusic, 26 March 2001

Otello, Chatelet, March / April 2001: "Cura gave notice from his initial entrance that he is a serious contender for greatness in this role of roles. He sang his Esultate with disconcerting ease, but anyone expecting the chiseled, palatal sound of a Martinelli will have been disappointed by the darkened vowels and baritonal quality of Cura's voice. The love duet brought some nice phrasing from the tenor, who spectacularly took the lines ‘A questa tua preghiera 'Amen'risponda la celeste schiera’ in one breath."  Opera News, July 2001

Otello, Chatelet, March / April 2001: "The cast was a dream. We finally heard Cura in the role that has contributed so much to his fame, and perhaps expectation explains the slight disappointment expressed by the divided audience. The notes are there, which we already know a lot, but without the wild excesses of the brilliant vocalism of yesteryear (Del Monaco, Vickers), and without—far from it—the musical class and the dramatic subtleties of a Domingo on stage or a Pavarotti in concert. Without a real vocal line, with his uneven colors and apparently few ideas about the character, this well-dressed Otello seems simply prosaic, and only manages to move us in the final scene." ConcertoNet, April 2001

Otello, Chatelet, March / April 2001: "The Moor of José Cura has high notes carved in stone. If the language of passion falls short of the ecstasy of love (a slightly stiff love duet), it is in this giant’s soul, slowly cracked by pain, that the eminently dramatic nature of the Argentinean tenor is revealed.   Cura does not overwork it and his middle register (despite some dullness) marries the movements of a soul caught in the shackles of torture."  Le Monde, 28 March 2001"

Otello

El Mundo

Maria Rosa Capell

27 April 2001

[Excerpt]

The presentation of this work is always complicated; the tripod that forms the solid base—Conductor, Otello, Iago—has to be finely balanced so that the success does not fall, and yet after so many years it is rarely achieved. To all this must be added a second level of great importance—the choir, Desdemona, Emilia and Cassio ..

Not everything was in balance this time either.  Gatti's conducting gave a vision that was not only correct but even brilliant in many moments, especially with the orchestral dynamics;  however, it was not so fine-tuned in the timing of the ensemble numbers, in which he could not always bring together voices that were disparate in personality or in the second act quartet with Desdemona’s poor control of pianos, Emilia's lack of projection and an Iago whose voice became inaudible on the pianos, all which ruined one of the best scenes of the work.  On the other hand, the trio of the third act "vieni, l'aula e deserta" was balanced in its entirety, resulting in one of the most seductive scenes due to its intention and balance, leaving all the lines of singing clearly outlined.  He was also refined in the fourth act where both the soloist numbers and the tutti were ample and categorical to reach a convincing end worthy of this impressive work.

There were two winners on the night, José Cura and the choir. Let's talk about Cura.  We can see that his vision of the Moor has matured since his representation in Madrid—he knows the character better and the possibilities in front of him. His great asset is acting, but it in turn becomes his great flaw the moment he crosses the line into over-acting. Although more contained than in the Teatro Real, you could still see exaggeration in gesture in the third act. As for his voice, it is a pity that he does not know or cannot hold the high notes which would give greater emphasis to expression and would turn his Otello into a strong and powerful figure. In spite of everything, he looked looser; his Esultate, always a complicated entrance, although not splendid, was very dignified. He showed a sweet and seductive song, perhaps the most seductive, in Gia della notte densa next to a Desdemona who sang with a beautiful but not very well controlled voice on the pianos and with a vibrato that at times became excessively sharp.   

[…]

But going back to the great character of the Moor, we must do justice to Cura who, despite his lights and shadows, is one of the undisputed and scarce (are there any others?) Otellos of the current scene, and he had more moving than dry moments, one of the latter was the forlorn Dio! mi potevi scagliar tutti i mali where he failed to show in a forlorn way the human soul of a man who sees a future with no way forward or way out. Instead he filled the auditorium in the Ora e per semper addio and in the feisty si pel ciel marmoreo giuro he convinced completely.  The same could not be said about Iago, who must be one of the basic supports of the tripod. Agache does not have the timber that this very fine character needs, who bases his insinuations on the double intention of seduction and Machiavellianism, neither of those "virtues" was shown; such an Iago would never convince even a character as primitive and without duplicity as Otello. His great moment, the creed, was more shouted than malicious…

Otello with all its innocent form

Financial Times

David Murray

25 April 2001

Elijah Moshinsky’s production of Otello, Verdi’s penultimate opera, was first seen at Covent Garden 14 years ago, and still enjoys regular revivals whenever a heavy-duty cast can be found.  The current revival features one of the latest international star tenors, José Cura, with Amanda Roocroft singing Desdemona and the Romanian baritone Alexandru Agache as Iago, all appearing at the Royal Opera for the first time in these role.  A strong team indeed, with Daniele Gatti conducting and the smaller roles solidly taken:  full houses are guaranteed. 

The original sets by Timothy O’Brien and Peter J. Hall still loom impressively, though Cyprus here looks strangely dark and murky.  The opening storm scene, with the anxious crowd watching for the return of Otello’s fleet, looks too well-rehearsed, too carefully choreographed to suggest chaos and confusion.  But the drunken celebrations and fighting later are properly wild; and meanwhile Cura has made a sensational entrance, his triumphant Esultate! cutting through the hubbub like a sword-blade.

Initially, he made nothing special of his words, but seemed content just to wield that burnished voice.  Cura's Otello is a young hero, not a grizzled veteran, and no further character emerged in Act One (as it always did with Domingo, for example, who suggested complex maturity from the start)—not even in the nocturnal duet with Roocroft’s lovely, frail Desdemona.

As Iago began to sow his poisonous suspicions, however, this Otello rose to the bait with passion and force.  By the end of Act Two he was aquiver with forebodings, and from there on he was utterly obsesses.  There was a certain amount of old-fashioned eye-rolling, but altogether he was too dangerous to brook any reprovals. 

In effective contrast, Agache’s Iago remained bleak and immovable throughout (where it used to be Gobbi who did the mad eye-rolling).  His Credo in un Dio crudel, an authoritative doctrinal statement, ended without the usual outburst of villainous laughter.  The voice is big and dark enough to chill the blood without histrionic tricks, and there was a sense of inexorable fell purpose. 

Against these two, Roocroft was the very picture of wounded innocence and bafflement.  If her soprano had seemed a touch constricted in the early duet, it opened out into full, warm-hearted expression as the opera went on.  She was heart-breaking in Act Three, and her Willow Song and prayer in the final act were memorably touching—without conscious pathos, just desperately sad.  

Kurt Streit sang a cleverly feckless Cassio, not such a dandy as he is often made seem, and Peter Auty was a doughty little Rodrigo.  A strong Montano from Roderick Earle, a staunch Emilia by Leah-Marian Jones; Arutjun Kotchinian was Lodovico, the horrified Venetian ambassador, sonorous but stagey.

Gatti evidently has very definite opinions about the score:  the orchestral music was imperiously controlled but not—on this first night—perfectly reconciled with what his principal singers had in mind.

Their rapport occasionally sounded tentative, but another performance or two should see that right.  In any case this is already an Otello of tremendous dramatic power.

The Jealous Moor ­ Hawaiian style

Independent

Anna Picard

22 April 2001

As part of the series Art that Shook the World, BBC 2 chose The Marriage of Figaro last night to represent opera ­ a satisfying, if rather safe choice. Choosing one work from the entire genre isn't a decision I'd like to make ­ though in terms of shaking the world, Monteverdi's Orfeo should be a contender ­ but I think I could come up with a reasonable top 10. And putting all love for tragédies lyriques aside, I'd have to put Verdi's Otello near the top. Why? For two reasons: its range (the score has more character, more focus, more colour, more shimmer, more muddiness, and more blackness than any other 19th-century opera) and its total seriousness. In a genre that can be spectacularly silly, there is nothing remotely silly about Otello. No tweeness. No creaking sentimentality. No rum-ti-tum.

You might think this is down to having good material to work with, but ­ as countless other operatic adaptations of Shakespeare prove ­ it's amazing what a bad composer can do to a good plot. Thankfully Verdi, together with his librettist Boito, resisted the urge to be cheaply entertaining. Even the children's chorus has integrity. Otello is a truly great opera and nobody seriously interested in music could be bored by this revival of Elijah Moshinsky's 1987 production, no matter how tiresome the breast-beating and eye-rolling from the tenor lead and eponymous hero, José Cura.

For all I know conductor Danielle Gatti might privately loathe this opera. He might think the story is claptrap and the score is total dreck. But I doubt it. He conducts Otello with precision and fervour, taking all leads from the score. From the first, long silence ­ unlike many conductors Gatti demands an audience's full attention before plunging in to the music ­ you know that you're in confident hands. When the music starts it's like a hail-storm; improbable, unnerving, blisteringly fast, almost supernatural. Gatti's Verdi is remarkably uncompromising and unsentimental, and the ROH orchestra ­ which is on phenomenal form at the moment ­ makes every detail count.

As far as the singing goes, this production scores highly. The bumped-up ROH chorus creates an electrifying sound. It's a well-balanced supporting cast too ­ Roderick Earle (Montano) and Leah-Marian Jones (Emilia) are particularly good ­ though the difference in individual acting styles is distracting. Kurt Streit ­ who is always a rather effortful presence, standing on tippy-toes for the high notes ­ plays Cassio as a bumptious naif. Fair enough, Cassio is hardly the sharpest tool in the box. But Streit's bathetic characterisation is so rooted in broad physical comedy that he has to stop when he sings. Thus we get a lurching drunk who suddenly stands bolt upright whenever he has something to say.

It's fair to say that this isn't the most psychologically penetrating production. There's plenty of bustle at the back of the stage and there's no danger of missing the big numbers as Moshinsky highlights them by getting the chorus to drop whatever it is they're doing (gambling, dancing, drinking, fighting, flirting) and form an interesting shape at the front with their arms raised in choreographed imprecation. It's exhilarating but extremely odd ­ like a Titian painting brought to life in the style of Les Mis. Desdemona (Amanda Roocroft) and Iago (Alexandru Agache) are exactly as they should be; she purely good and he evil in a complicated fashion.

And Cura? It's a big, muscular voice and he's a big, muscular actor. He's heroic. He's brutish. He's unremittingly, armpit-sniffingly macho.

When Cura sings quietly it's entrancing. When he sings loudly (which is most of the time) it's an exciting combination of impressive engineering and dare-devilry ­ like motor racing or aerial acrobatics. But for much of the opera he falls back on tearing his hair jealously or rolling his eyes jealously or striding sideways jealously while flashing his Hawaiian Tropic-ed tummy. (Put it away, José.) The result is sadly more a parody of his operatic predecessors than a tribute to them. Domingo's great trick in this production was his ability to react in character ­ not an easy task as Otello has to stay silent for much of the Act III finale. But Cura cannot incorporate naturalism. There is no vulnerability to his Otello, no complexity, no growing paranoia, simply the flick of a switch. He ought to see Nil by Mouth to understand the baby behind the bully.

For me the evening belonged to Roocroft and Agache, both of whom wisely concentrated on naturalistic acting. Agache, who bears a striking resemblance to Orson Welles, played Iago as Harry Lime; charming, deadly, completely amoral. His voice has a Wellesian quality too ­ subtle, insinuating and moistly resonant ­ and unlike many an Iago (unlike many an opera singer, for that matter), Agache's acting starts from the brain rather than the body. As a result, the briefest glance conveyed more than a thousand eye-popping gurns. Roocroft, who looked enchanting, pulled off the difficult task of representing virtuous love. Her tenderness toward Otello was completely believable, so too her misery and confusion at his accusations of infidelity. The Willow Song and Ave Maria had an unshowy, unselfish luminosity that revealed Desdemona's character rather than Roocroft's voice. More than that you cannot ask.

Otello

Opera

Andrew Clark

June 2001

[Excerpt]

 “The big draw of this revival was, self-evidently, José Cura’s first performances of the title role at Covent Garden.  I’m sure he did not disappoint his followers, but he disappointed me.  Perhaps that is the penalty of high expectations.  He has many natural qualities for this role—physical stature, stage presence, a burnished voice of considerable range and power.  That’s part of Cura’s problem.  He is so prodigiously gifted that the effort to go the extra mile and really understand the role, and engage with it psychologically, is too much for him.  He can get by without:  the voice and Latin temperament will ultimately carry him.  Cura is guaranteed to make an impression, but I never escaped the feeling, throughout this performance, that I was listening to Cura the lion-tenor, rather than Verdi’s Otello.

Esultate was near ideal:  fearlessly secure, confidently phrased, altogether imposing.  From there, it was not so much downhill all the way as continuing on a plateau, where the landscape varied little in shape, perspective or colour.  This was an Otello of broad brush strokes, few subtleties, ever willing to close each set-piece with a crowd-pleasing kick of the voice.  An unconscionably young and eligible Otello, too; and though well-contrasted with Amanda Roocroft’s pale, blonde Desdemona, with who he would have made an ideal centre-spread in Hello! Magazine (divorce pending), he looked too naturally Caucasian in make-up to be her racial opposite.  An impulsive Otello, to be sure, as we could tell from his masterful handling of the Venetian ambassador’s scene—but these were the reaction of a man suffering from the arrogance (and insecurity) of power rather than in the process of disintegration.  And definitely not a tragic Otello:  Cura never really drew our sympathy, because he seems incapable of identifying with someone with an inferiority complex.  Could it be that Cura has fallen too deeply in love with himself?  The lack of tragic grandeur in the final two acts set the seal on this Otello as a study in demonic swagger—all jealousy, no vulnerability. 

None of this criticism can alter the fact that Cura is the Otello of today and tomorrow, that his timbre is as handsome as his appearance, and that he made a strong centrepiece for this generally excellent revival.

This Otello is a Cura's egg

Telegraph

Michael Kennedy

22 April 2001

ELIJAH Moshinsky's production of Verdi's Otello for the Royal Opera is now 14 years old and looks good for some time yet. Since 1987 it has been the frame for several fine characterisations of Otello himself, headed by Placido Domingo, and now serving for José Cura's London stage debut in this mighty role.

The public, it seems, is determined to elevate Cura to the throne that will be vacated when Domingo abdicates, but whether he is yet ready for such a responsibility was put into doubt by his performance at Covent Garden on Thursday. He looks the part, lean and rugged, and at any rate in the last two acts he acts it quite convincingly without suggesting that he is yet wholly inside it. The emotion is cleverly simulated but was not, I felt, projected spontaneously from within with consistency.

The greatest Otellos I have heard and seen are Ramon Vinay, Jon Vickers, Charles Craig, James McCracken and Domingo. It is against such predecessors that Cura must be measured. As yet, he is not in their class. He often sings too loudly, at other times the voice drops away to a croon. He does not yet command the trumpet-tone for Ora e per sempre addio; on the other hand, Dio! mi potevi scagliar was genuinely anguished.

The exchanges with Desdemona at the start of Act 2 were, frankly, off the note, but later in this act, as Iago's poison works and jealousy becomes all-consuming, he gave hints of what he may achieve as he grows deeper into the part. This is an Otello in progress.

This was also Amanda Roocroft's British debut as Desdemona and it was one of the most radiantly sung and acted portrayals of the role that has graced this stage for many a year. She brought to the wronged and piteous heroine the purity and fullness of tone allied to evocative and scrupulously moulded phrasing that made her singing of Janacek's comparable victims, Jenufa and Katya, so memorable and affecting.

It was thrilling to hear an English soprano, of which the Royal Opera employs too few in star roles, dominating the great Act 3 ensemble finale with all the confidence and flair of whichever celebrated Italian or German contemporary soprano may spring into your mind. Then, in the Willow Song and Ave Maria, she held the house in thrall with exquisite singing.

Alexandru Agache's Iago, also new to this theatre, is a bluff portrayal. Inclined in Act 1 to address everybody, as Queen Victoria complained about Gladstone, as if they were a public meeting, he grew subtler during Act 2 and sang a sinister Credo. Kurt Streit made more of Cassio than most tenors can manage and the lesser roles were well taken. The chorus sang both lustily and sensitively in Act 1, in which the fight was especially well staged.

I felt about Daniele Gatti's conducting much as I did about Cura's Otello. He brought real Italian passion to the score and there were some telling instrumental details. But there was also a tendency to draw out phrases to their last wither and to rush others which suggests that his interpretation is still on the drawing-board. Reservations apart, though, it was a great night at the opera - and it is, of course, a very great opera indeed.

Young Lion Fails to Roar
 

Telegraph

Rupert Christiansen

23 April 2001

TWO years ago, in a concert performance at the Barbican conducted by Sir Colin Davis, the Argentinian tenor José Cura showed promise of following Jon Vickers and Placido Domingo as the world's great interpreter of Verdi's Otello. In this dispiriting revival of Elijah Moshinsky's familiar production, that promise remains unfulfilled.

Cura undoubtedly boasts the physique du role - he is a tall, ruggedly handsome young lion. But that was as far as it went. His histrionic involvement in the proceedings was minimal: instead of the noble general agonisingly degraded by jealousy and suspicion, Cura affected an air of irritable indifference to Iago and Desdemona. The worst this Otello appeared to be suffering was a headache.

His singing was even flatter, in both senses of the word. The top of Cura's voice was dried out, his phrasing unmusical. Never have I heard an Otello announce his great opening cry of triumph, Esultate, so sloppily, or one who more carelessly threw away the heart-rending Ora e per sempre addio. A few climactic moments in Act 3 (the striking of Desdemona, for example) came into focus and served as sad reminders of what might have been - or what could still be, if Cura pulls himself together and concentrates on artistry rather than stardom.

Nothing else raised the low temperature level set by Cura. Conductor Daniele Gatti showed little rapport with the tenor, and although his reading of the score was marked by firm, clean orchestral playing, there was no sense of the threads of an ever-tauter, ever-intensifying drama being pulled inexorably together.

Nor did he do much to inspire the rest of the cast. Alexander Agache has a beautiful baritone, but his Iago was under-characterised and mushily articulated. Amanda Roocroft made an attractive Desdemona: she sang very competently, without ever convincing me that she is a natural for the role (not enough sheen above the stave, not enough breath, not enough colouring of the text). With the honourable exception of the chorus, whipping up a magnificent storm in the opera's opening minutes, this was an Otello which looked considerably better than it sounded.

Principals Provide Key for Verdi's Success

The Times

Rodney Milnes

21 April 2001

THERE were two moments in Thursday’s performance to be called in evidence when trying to explain to the man in the street why opera wields such power.

The first was the opening storm, with the excellent chorus and orchestra going full-bat: the sheer sound was overwhelming, and Daniele Gatti’s expert conducting made the meaning and purpose of the music blindingly clear. The second was the scene with the Venetian Ambassador, when, in Elijah Moshinsky’s exemplary production, a huge Veronese canvas comes to life. Both moments also demonstrate why opera has to be so expensive, so labour-intensive.

There was much more than sheer noise to Gatti’s highly individual treatment of the music. Much of it is sparely scored, of almost chamber-music quality, which Gatti emphasised, as he did its warmth and lyricism. If there was a corresponding lack of the nervous tension that other conductors bring to the music, so be it: Gatti has a personal view of it, and made it work.

José Cura is a phenomenally gifted artist: seldom can anyone have made the hideously difficult title role sound so easy to sing, or so rewarding in purely vocal terms. His warmth of phrase and instinctive musicianship fitted well with Gatti’s overall view. His dramatic reading is another matter. It was as though this Moor were heavily tranquillised: he seldom showed emotion, never moved at more than a gentle amble. An original, not entirely convincing interpretation.

A Desdemona as young-looking as Amanda Roocroft — 14? 16 at most — makes the character’s fatal innocence all the more understandable, and indeed touching, rather than (as can happen) infuriating. Her beautifully floated high, soft lines went to the heart of the matter, and she very cleverly got round the one or two passages where perhaps a heavier voice than her lovely lyric soprano is needed.

After a bumpy start, Alexandru Agache (Iago) turned in one of the very best performances he has given here: full-frontal blast in the Credo, horribly insinuating in “Era la notte”, taken at a poisonous pianissimo. With three such principals, you can’t go far wrong.

Otello, Nice, June 2001:  “José Cura, who turned early in his career to Otello, refuted many skeptics; his voice has not suffered and the virility of his singing is captivating. It's most remarkable how, without any apparent effort, this singer can cope with difficult, strength-taking passages.  He's is not like an opera-singer on the stage but an actor who accidentally expresses sounds as singing.”  Opernglas, September 2001

Otello, Trieste, August 2001:  “José Cura, who in addition to his recognized vocal skills is an excellent actor, made a literate Otello, without shouts or theatricalities, solidly constructed on a line of very regular song; the more difficult vocal passages flowed without hesitation or problems. Cura's Otello is, really, a great creation.”  La Vanguardia Digital, 5 August 2001  

Otello, Trieste, August 2001:  “The Teatro Verdi took the occasion to show us the very best it can do with an incomparable performance of Otello on a very hot summer night. Cura returned last night in the full glory of his artistic and vocal efficiency, which let him show us an Otello that was not only moving but tormented by his agitated expressive intentions. Perfect on the acting plane, Cura moved us with his beautiful, suave voice to the point that he can be forgiven some stretch marks and gives in to some lazy and careless accentuation...”  Il Giornale della Musica, 2 August 2001

Otello, Zürich, November 2001:  “José Cura, the young Argentinian tenor, is literally sucked into the title role. He falls, with relentless consistency, into madness. He trembles, he drools, he loses control. He is completely in the hands of Iago, who at the end of the third act rolls him aside with his foot like a slain animal.  Cura, a giant of a man, is a theatrical animal who gives his utmost - precisely guided by the director but always hard on the edge of cliché.  Vocally, he confirms that he is not unjustly considered a young star. His Otello, between lyrically breathed piani and literally shouted forti, alone is worth the trip to Zurich.”  Blu-Win, 24 September  2001

Otello, Zürich, November 2001:  “Like the staging, the singers seemed to be without direction and orientation. José Cura saved himself with representative routine, although it was obvious even he didn't know who he was supposed to be - the victorious commander in star wars or a simple astronaut, a suppressed person or an oppressor, a man controlled by passion or calculation. Beyond this, the separation of Iago the singer and Iago the actor [Note:  Raimondi Ruggero was ill; the director played the role while a baritone sang offstage] gave Cura visible trouble, and not without reason. Cura did manage to get to the side of the surprised Mastromarino [the baritone] during the revenge-duet. Thanks to his enormous presence on stage, however, Cura could still impress even if the production problems kept him from actually touching the audience this night. Even under these trying conditions, his Otello is hard to beat vocally. Although he sings this most trying of all Verdi tenor roles with comparative lyricism, Cura's dramatic outbursts are easy and convincing. The intensity and emotional depth he can give to his virile timbre were amply demonstrated on this unsuccessful opening night with his superb Ora per sempre and Niun mi tema.”  Opernglass, November 2001

Otello, Zürich, September 2001:  “Sven-Eric Bechtolf has a congenial Otello in José Cura. An acting singer, he immerses himself in every situation--love, hatred, and despair. But this is a complete Otello, in his tenderness, in his wildness, in his blindness. And for each of these feelings, José Cura finds the true suitable vocal expression from a cry to a silent weep. Excellent.”  Zürichsee Zeitung

Otello, Zürich, September 2001:  “From the beginning José Cura plays Otello with such exaggeration that it is hardly possible to intensify further and his spastic trembling in the fit of madness in the third act seems merely histrionic. The fact that he vocally lacks the volume and expansive power of a highly dramatic Otello need not be a disadvantage:  it is in the quieter sections and in the middle vocal range that he achieves the strongest effect.  But his ambition is aimed toward the extreme areas of expression, the frenzy, the exaggerated declamation, and in doing so he loses control over his voice. Fluctuating tone and lack of rhythmic precision are the consequences.”  NZZ, 25 September 2001

Otello, Zürich, November 2001:  “José Cura started as an over-pitched protagonist, but after calming down delivered a moving and sizzling portrayal of Otello’ tantrums.”  Opera, March 2002

Otello, Zürich, 2002:  “Whether by choice or by habit, the robust-voiced Cura sang like a bit of a brute, least appropriately in the love duet, but with previously unheard technical security, even in his pitch-troubled lower range.”  ClassicsToday, 27 June - 7 July 2002 

Otello, Zürich, 2002:  “José Cura was a straightforward Moor, communicating true feelings, suffocating, and vocally first-rate as I had never heard him before. He didn't save himself, sang with even voice throughout the evening, and knew how to use ringing top notes to wonderful effect for the climaxes. If only the Argentinian were always so concentrated and serious in his work, there wouldn't be as many discussions about him.”  Der Neue Merker (August/Sep 2002, p.69)

Otello, Zürich, July 2002:  “His Esultate is so powerful that critics have sometimes accused him of “eccentricity”. But when Cura’s Otello, lying on his back, woos Desdemona in Già nella notte densa – Venere splende, it is not only women in the audience who are fascinated and excited in view of so much athleticism combined with a noble, mostly nobly used natural voice.”  NZZ, 7 July 2002

Otello, Zürich, July 2002:  “[…] A little about Esultate! and the actual musical side of the performance in general:  José Cura sang his entrance in a nonchalant manner and with unpretentious brilliance.  Cura’s vocals today are not only in a state of absolutely unclouded well-being, but they have also grown significantly - simply compare how Cura sang the same role three years ago in Madrid. His voice now sounds with impeccable evenness in all registers; he has an excellent command of mezzo voce and piano.  His interpretation of the character of Otello has not undergone any particular changes: Cura’s Moor is a man of courage, but simple and trusting, morbidly jealous and subject to attacks of some disease, very reminiscent of epilepsy.  Certain moments of the role he does better than many of the "textbook" performers of this part - for example, in the fourth act he utters: Si! Diceste questa sera le vostre preci?  in a very calm, almost mundane way, thereby enabling the drama to develop consistently, in full agreement with the libretto and score.  Cura creates quite a few such moments of his own, gained through practice and reflection on the role.  However, his performance also contains many moments of another kind, less indisputable and not always enhancing the part: completely arbitrary changes of rhythm and tempo that are not confirmed by logic and an abundance (especially in the first two acts) of rubatos that are more appropriate in Chopin's music than in Verdi's - especially when it comes to ensembles. This is way so many conductors dislike and avoid working with Cura…” Призрак оперы   / 2002 

Otello, Zürich, July 2003:  “José Cura’s Otello is a natural phenomenon. The singing is more of a scream, the parlando a whisper, the voice often appears rough, brightens, then again baritonal and bronze, but the singing is only part of the interpretation: Cura, proud as a statue of Michelangelo, savors his effect.”  Die Welt, 25 February 2003 

Otello, Zürch, September 2004: “On stage, José Cura was announced as suffering from a cold and he was unable to suppress increasingly strong coughing fits throughout the performance. It is difficult under these to pass judgment on the performance of a singer who is in obvious bad form. However, the Argentine tenor left the unpleasant impression of a very rough performance, as if he had run out of time to rehearse the role. It’s true that he’s in Zurich preparing a new production of Stiffelio, which may provide an explanation…” ConcertoNet, September 2004

Otello, Warsaw, November 2002:  “The sensational Adam Kruszewski, the excellent Izabella Kłosińska and José Cura performed yesterday at the National Opera in Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello.   This could, actually, be the complete review.  The event, which was notable for Jose Cura's guest participation in the title role of the opera, disappointed the audience. During the intermission there was a debate as to whether the tenor was indisposed or simply had little regard for the Warsaw audience.  In brief, the performance of this artist, an award winning artist after all, more closely resembled someone marking during a rehearsal than a performance created specifically for him. This was noticed by the Warsaw audience, who welcomed the tenor warmly although with significantly less applause than for the other principles.   If not for the fact everyone came yesterday for Cura, the evening would have been quite successful but the promise of an extraordinary event made me leave the Teatr Wielki feeling unsatisfied."  Kamerton, 14 November 2002

Otello, Warsaw, November 2002:  “I had mixed feelings [for the performance of] José Cura. Touted as a great star, the Argentine tenor did not shine brightly tonight.  The cold that the singer struggled with during the performance undoubtedly contributed to this, although I suspect that not all the shortcomings could be blamed on it. Cura's voice in the so-called midrange (and in lyrical moments) can please and intrigued with its dark, instantly recognizable timbre. However, the higher (and louder) the worse it gets--the voice becomes compressed, loses its attractive timbre and takes on an unpleasant, harsh sound. I do not know what the situation would have been had the singer been in his best form - on this day he was running away from the very precarious sounding mountains as quickly as possible - but Cura's acting was even more irritating.  There is no doubt he can act and create a flesh-and-blood character, so why does he only show it to us from time to time?   Moments of excellent acting were intertwined with fragments in which the singer clearly stopped performing and wandered aimlessly around the stage. The unevenness was truly amazing; perhaps Cura the actor was simply not (isn't?) able to maintain the tension so necessary in this extremely dramatic and exhausting role.”   Trubador,  November 2002

Otello, Warsaw, November 2002:  “José Cura disappointed me. He was clearly indisposed on this evening and was coughing demonstratively as if to justify the poor sound of his voice.  Even worse, however, was his "acting," amateurish, superficial and exaggerated.  In the scene following Desdemona's death in Act IV, for example, he started to sob and moan so loudly and so artificially that it was almost laughable.  It was all the more irritating since his partner performing the role of Desdemona's was an excellent singing actor.  Perhaps this performance would have been less tiresome without "one of the greatest tenors of our time"?  PRV, November 2002

Otello, Warsaw, November 2002:  “It was to be an event:  for the first time in many years, a world-class artist, Argentinean tenor José Cura, was to participate in a performance of the National Opera. In addition, he was starring in his showpiece role.   It is, however, difficult to assess what Cura presented yesterday, since for a large part of the performance his singing was only marked.  The artist signaled to the audience that he was indisposed, although the day before at the press conference he did not mention any health problems and was full of humor and self-confidence.   Perhaps it was [fatigue] due to the overabundance of various duties that Cura takes on.  His was also a rather superficial interpretation from the acting point of view. In Mariusz Treliński's unusual Warsaw staging, which departed from tradition and was played to a specific rhythm, Cura decided to present the title character his own way. He was simply a jealous macho, who has to punish his unfaithful wife with death.”  Rzeczpospolita, 14 November 2002

Otello, Warsaw, November 2002:  “On the day of the Argentinean singer's performance, the 2nd Polish Radio Program had an interview with Stanislaw Leszczynski, deputy artistic director of the National Opera, and asked him about his impressions from the rehearsal. Director Leszczynski replied that the tenor had joined the rehearsals with a certain indifference.  The reason for the arrogance of the Argentinean visitor (he refused to wear the greyish-green face make-up) is a mystery: he has been in front of Polish audiences twice before and perhaps he assumed he would arouse the same admiration he evoked at concerts—but these were social and commercial events which attracted a specific audience.  Moreover, his detachment was all the more irritating since it should not have been [his co-stars] who needed to adapt to Cura; rather, he should have worked hard to keep up with his partners. The singer was hindered by a cold, as he sometimes coughed, as did some in the audience, but I had the impression that Adam Kruszewski had to support the tenor in his struggle with the extremely difficult role of Otello, so difficult that few singers can successfully face it.”  Trubador, 25 November 2002

José Cura makes himself at home in Poland

Every Audience is Good

Katarzyna Gardzina talks to José Cura, Argentine singer and conductor

Zycie Warszawy

Katarzyna Gardzina

November 2002

[Excerpt]

 Q:  On Monday you conducted a concert for Europe in the Grand Theatre. Why did you participate in this undertaking?

José Cura:  Since I am the conductor of Sinfonia Varsovia, which was to perform, it was natural that I was invited to conduct the concert. And since I had free time, I could undertake it. Normally it is not easy, because I am very busy, but these two or three days are just free.

Q:  During the concert for Europe, we heard Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Was this the first time you faced this work as a conductor? Sinfonia Varsovia recorded it with Master Yehudi Menuhin - were you not afraid of comparisons?

Yes, I conducted this work for the first time, and no, I was not afraid. Why should I be afraid of comparisons? Yehudi Menuhin is a legend, and I'm just a young musician, so I think it is obvious.  Someone who compares a young musician with a legend is stupid. If he is stupid, you should not waste your time on him.  

Q:  In addition to the Sinfonia Varsovia orchestra and choirs, the concert featured Polish solo singers. What can you say about working with them?

José Cura:  My experience in working with Polish singers is very short - only two or three days. This is not enough time to say much. But I can say that here in Poland there are very talented singers and musicians. It is a country very rich in musical talents. You’re very lucky.

Q:  Last year you recorded an album with the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra with Rachmaninov's Second Symphony. When will it be released? Is the concert for Europe also to be recorded on CD?

José Cura:  The concert was recorded, I don't know if it will be released ... Probably the album will be released within a year, two years, or maybe never.  We'll see ... The album with Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2 will be released in Great Britain, in London, as early as next week. The rest of the world has to wait until spring.

Q:  Let’s return for a moment to your performance in Otello at the Teatr Wielki-Polish National Opera. What are your impressions after this performance?

José Cura:  I must say that initially I had problems with the directing, but after two days of rehearsals and working with colleagues, we found a professional compromise, the effects of which could be seen. I look forward to working again with the National Opera ensemble and to perform Otello together in Japan in January.

Q:  After several performances in Poland, how would you assess the Polish audience, as you have the opportunity to compare it with audiences from different countries?

José Cura:  Any audience can be a good audience. The reaction of the audience doesn't depend on the audience itself, but on the artist.  If you give something of yourself, the audience responds, if not, the audience will never respond.  For example, my Otello in Warsaw. I was sick, coughing all the time. Normally, any other artist would have cancelled the performance. I didn't because I knew it was a very important performance, not only for me, but for the theater and everybody. So I sang it while coughing. The audience understood and gave me a nice reception, so everyone was happy. The audience knew I was sick, but also that I was giving them the best I could at that moment. The problem is when you read the reviews. Some do not know what to write and express themselves pathetically because they need personal promotion. What can I say? 

Q:  In Poland, you sang and conducted at two concerts simultaneously, you conduct the Sinfonia Varsovia orchestra. Do you currently get many invitations to perform as a conductor?

José Cura:  Enough. I don't have time for more. Sometimes I have a concert with the London Symphony, recently I had a concert in Taiwan, there will be concerts in Russia with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. But not much, because I still don't have time. And if I have any free time to conduct, the first thing I do is ask my orchestra, which is probably logical. Because if I had free time and gave it to different orchestra, it wouldn't be nice for them.

Q:  Where will you perform on the opera stage in the near future?

José Cura:  Oh, in many places, I don't remember at the moment. You can check it on my website.

Q:  Would you like to say something to music lovers who did not manage to get to your performance in Otello?

José Cura:  Yes, I have very good news for them. Soon I have a meeting with the director of the opera, Jacek Kaspszyk.  We will talk about future joint plans - mine and the Teatr Wielki, so maybe after this meeting I will have some good information for them.

Otello, Florence, 2003:  “The Maggio Musicale Fiorentino closed with a production of Verdi’s masterpiece, one to forget from the point of view of the direction; success, however, for a wonderful Barbara Frittoli, some controversy regarding Vladimir Galouzine, and a personal triumph for José Cura, who undertook the role of the Moor for only one evening between two performances of Turandot at the Arena di Verona, [and who] earned himself a personal triumph. His theatrical stage presence and his vocal authority, of an undeniable timbre and dramatic impact, have made his Otello one of the most sought after today, and he is an absolute protagonist, one who divides people’s tastes but also one who is able to attract all attention to himself. His was an interpretation that succeeded in sparing this production the unfortunate sorts of the premiere.”  L’Opera, July / August 2003

Otello, Munich, July 2005:  “For directors who might have been in the audience, it must have been a frustrating evening. Two singers who are totally absorbed in their roles, who put their hearts and souls into them, who have internalized their parts so believably and show such vocal brilliance on top of it – how can they possibly need a stage manual or director’s notes? To be sure, that kind of thing can only work with stars such as Barbara Frittoli and José Cura; fans in the National Theatre went crazy, the ovation continuing even after the curtain was raised to show workers on stage taking apart the scaffolding. Cura’s voice has evidently changed considerably. While in the past he used to show off his one-colored, one-dimensional dark tenor, his heroic voice has now gained metal and precision.... It was suitable that Cura played Otello as a cross between macho and softie, as someone torn back and forth, as a man not above collapsing is shocked disbelief after slapping the woman he adores in the face.”  Munchen Merkur, 4 July 2005

Otello, Munich, July 2005:  “It was almost a miracle that Barbara Frittoli and José Cura were able to identify with their roles so precisely without the machinations of [an ineffectual] Iago.  Both were in top vocal form. Their stage presence in all stages of psychological developments, the confrontation of love and hate were designed with such passion that had an appropriate Iago been cast, this could have been an Otello of exceptional rank.”  Abendzeitung, 4 July 2005

Otello, Munich, July 2005:  “The list of flaws and virtues of José Cura as Otello is so long that you could make ten different and all valid criticisms.   The technique is faulty, the high notes never born beyond the bare minimum, and with respect to the groans and moans and sighs, the Argentine singer can be f***g irritating.  It was a miracle that Leiferkus did not give the tenor a couple of slaps for his blatant lack of discipline during the duet that closes the second act. On the other hand, however, there is a precise understanding of all aspects of the character and mood, most especially in the visceral enhancing:  the way Cura internalized Dio! I potevi scagliar was exemplary.  His Otello certainly doesn’t leave anyone indifferent.”  Avue, July 2005