Recital
Birmingham Symphony Hall, 6 April 2000
By John Steane, Opera Now, September/October 2000
Singers appear to like the Symphony Hall in Birmingham; if they come once, they usually return. So this was the second time in recent years that we have heard Jose Carreras in these excellent acoustics and with an enthusiastic audience, eager to welcome him, reluctant to let him go. He sang, as before, within severe limitations of range, repertoire, and expressive resources. It would be easy to enlarge on these points, and more of their kind; but what remained, on this occasion, was a certain sense of wonder. With what on the face of it is very little to hold such an audience, he still has them held. He offers no high notes, no operatic arias, no tricks of personality or presentation, his voice is now by no means beautiful in quality or strikingly individual in timbre. What he accomplishes is done with a sense of dedication. Each song, each phrase even, is what impresses as a concentrated imaginative attention, and he can still carry off songs such as Danza's 'Vieni' and Leoncavallo's 'Serenade Napolitaine' with panache. When he turns to sing 'A vucchella' to the audience on stage behind him, they love him for it. And a sense of love does run through the whole audience: partly, no doubt, in recognition for what he has been through in his great illness. It is fascinating to find that certain notes, around upper F and F sharp, remain to him as a reminder of past glories. He sings them dangerously, as he did in the later years of his main career; yet rather miraculously they are the ones that survive. His 'artistic' soft singing is not really well done - too little integration with the main body of his voice. But those few notes at a full forte can thrill. Perhaps it was the desire to hear more of them that had the audience calling him back again and again: if some of them had had their way he would have been there all night.
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