Voice of a valiant fight well won

Jose Carreras, Singing from the Soul, An Autobiography ( Souvenir Press, £15.99) Elizabeth Leeming IN July 1987 Jose Carreras was struck down by leukemia. There followed months of acute illness, the misery of chemotherapy, a bone marrow operation, the fear not only of losing one of the world's great tenor voices but life itself. On July 21, 1988, however, Carreras was back on stage after a valiant fight, singing in Barcelona for his fellow Catalans. The story of this internationally loved singer, silenced for a year and then reemerging to an ecstatic welcome, is a moving one and one rejoices with Carreras in his recovery. "It's almost impossible for me to describe the thrill of feeling so alive... I want to thank God... It's obvious to me now that fear is a poor reason for faith in him."
The first 60 pages of the book are taken up by this intense story and, perhaps inevitably, what follows is lukewarm by comparison. Carreras goes on to describe the way his career started and flourished. In 1958 he appeared aged 11 at the Gran Teatro del Liceo in Barcelona, spending the years while his voice changed seeing every opera staged there. He started serious training in 1964 and it was in a performance of' Norma at the Liceo in 1970 that he met the soprano Monsarrat Caballe who then asked him to partner her in Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia. Success followed success winning the Verdi competition in Parma, a contract with City Opera in New York, appearing in most of the world's famous opera houses with dizzying speed.
It was in 1973 that he was brought to the attention of Karajan with whom he had "the most extraordinary and important relationship in my artistic life'. Carreras expresses his views on his art: "to love a voice, I had to discover the singer's heart and soul in it."
A likeable man as well as the passionate singer comes across and Carreras fans will gain some insight into the private world of this star. However, on reaching the end it is the story of the illness and the tight that remains.