José Carreras is learning title role in a new opera

José Carreras is learning title role in a new opera

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norman lebrecht

November 06, 2013

The Catalan tenor (below, left) will play the judge in El Juez, an opera by Christian Kolonovits that will premiere next April in Bilbao. The story, by Angelika Messner, is about children who were stolen from their parents under the Franco regime and raised under false identities in monasteries.

It has powerful personal resonances for Carreras. Both of his parents were from republican families that suffered under Franco’s fascism.

jose carreras2

Comments

  • Eleanor says:

    Nice photograph of the great tenor with Dominque Meyer! Will the Vienna State Opera be co-producing ? Christian Kolonovits is Austrian.

  • Simon says:

    Good news these horrible crimes are now made public, and maybe an opera is a good way of dealing with it.

    But, Norman, are you sure Carreras’ own parents suffered this as well? The Catalan Wikipedia (which certainly won’t have pro-Franco sympathies) doesn’t mention anything like this (though his father’s republican affiliation and exile is a well known fact). Furthermore, his parents were born long before Franco came to power.

  • AlanGrantViolin says:

    Spanish, Norman, not Catalan. Catalonia is not a country, and catalan is not a nationality. Let’s be correct and leave the separatists claims out of these things.

    • Simon says:

      Referring to someone as Catalan, Scottish, Bavarian, English, Texan or Sicilian doesn’t necessarily imply support for separatism. Rather, disrespectful statements like yours might make more people rally behind the separatists.

    • Joshaw says:

      I’ll keep that in mind next time I buy a box of Taylor’s Yorkshire Tea Bags in case I’m inadvertently giving support to a dangerous separatist movement.

  • tenorlove says:

    Carreras’ parents were Republican, but, AFAIK, they did not lose a child in this way. And Mr. Carreras himself says that he is Catalan.

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