José Carreras: A Unique Interpreter of Puccini

When singing Neapolitan songs or Tosti’s salon music, a singer’s personal style matters more than bel canto technique. That is why figures like Di Stefano and Carreras are regarded as true masters of Italian art songs. I believe the same principle applies to the Puccini repertoire. Given the nature of Puccini’s music, character outweighs bel canto technique.

When Carreras sings heavy Verdi roles or bel canto repertoire, a sense of mismatch is undeniable, sometimes even difficult to listen to. This is because he did not possess a proper bel canto technique. Yet in Puccini alone, Carreras transcended conventional standards and opened an entirely new world. In his Puccini, pure beauty overwhelms everything even before technique is considered.

Traditionalists often dismiss Carreras outright by focusing solely on his vocal production. However, anyone who listens closely to his live Puccini performances from the 1970s must acknowledge a breathtaking beauty that transcends traditional technique. I myself am a traditionalist, and I deeply regret the disappearance of bel canto technique in today’s opera world. For that reason, I once felt strong resistance toward Carreras. And yet, every time, his Puccini interpretations and the distinctive timbre and style of his Italian art songs inevitably brought me back. While I cannot call Carreras the greatest opera singer, I can say with certainty that his interpretations of Puccini and Italian art songs constitute a unique and irreplaceable legacy—one that existed neither before nor after him. At least for me, and for a few others I have encountered over time.

Carreras blends into Puccini’s characters with remarkable completeness. His approach is closer to drama itself than to traditional operatic convention. His appearance, timbre, acting, and phrasing align with the roles with striking naturalness. I feel he possessed the ideal qualities to embody Cavaradossi in Tosca and Rodolfo in La Bohème, as if those roles had been written with him in mind.

His singing was marked by a more androgynous sensitivity than overt masculinity, yet his voice carried both melancholy and youthful ardor. In the early to mid-1970s, when his vocal cords were still healthy, his sound possessed a smooth, natural resonance of exceptional beauty—entirely unlike the dry, forced voice he produced from the mid-1980s onward. His musical style was equally distinctive.

Mario Del Monaco—of course, a singer whose technical superiority makes comparison almost meaningless—sang exclusively for the theater. As a result, his singing lacked, to some degree, the refinement and delicacy valued today even in popular music. Carreras, by contrast, despite lacking technique, sang as if every moment were meant for recording. His control of pacing and expression was extraordinarily natural and refined, comparable to pianist Seong-Jin Cho performing Debussy’s Clair de Lune.

Carreras also demonstrated an almost obsessive insistence on precise pitch, even at the expense of his voice. While some singers sacrificed intonation to avoid vocal strain, I believe accuracy of pitch is essential to musical completeness. Carreras’s approach reveals his deep commitment to musical integrity.

Through this approach, he expressed everything beautifully: not merely tenderness in La Bohème, but beautiful tenderness; not merely anger and despair in Tosca, but beautiful anger and despair. This is what truly distinguishes Carreras from today’s tenors. While both lack bel canto technique, today’s tenors often fail to express beauty itself. They believe correct notes alone constitute singing, and often fail even at that. Had they expressed sensory beauty as Carreras did, opera today would be in a far better state.

I do not view positively Carreras’s continued appearances in major opera houses after his voice was damaged, nor his later involvement in projects such as the Three Tenors. These may even have contributed to the current decline of opera. Nevertheless, the Carreras of the 1970s remains a prodigious, electrifying talent. With that conviction, I created this video in the sincere hope that more people might come to truly appreciate his Puccini operas