FOR years he has been spoken of as a pretender to the tenor throne: but it should be obvious to anyone who has watched his career over the past 12 months that Jose Cura isn't pretending. Since his visit to Dublin last May the young Argentinian dramatic tenor has performed, often to delirious acclaim, on Europe's most glamorous operatic stages: La Scala, the Vienna Staaatsoper, the Bastille, Covent Garden.
"Glamorous?" he protests, on the phone from his home in Paris. I would say dangerous. You know, the tradition in these places is so big - and most of all in La Scala. Every phantom of every big composer and singer is somewhere in La Scala, and when you're there you can feel
After his Irish tour Cura is off to Turin to make his debut in the title role of Verdi's Otello, under the baton, no less, of Claudio Abbado. He's ready, he says, despite his relative youth; why wait, when nature has given you a voice of the right weight and colour? "The last big Otello was Domingo, of course - it seems that he won't sing any more the role, I dunno for sure, but I mean he is also coming to an age where he doesn't want to keep on doing these extremely heavy things. So there's a sort of vacancy."
Cura has also decided he is ready to make his first recording later this year, a disc of Puccini arias on the Erato label - to be conducted, strangely enough, before Placido Domingo. "When I was invited to do the project we put various names on the table - and then one day we said, `why don't we call Placido and ask him to participate in my first recording?' As a sort of friendly gesture, or something like that, to the man who was the last big one in my repertoire. And he was happy to agree."
Meanwhile, thanks to the sponsorship of New Ireland Assurance, Irish audiences will get another chance to see Cura in action - though with the concerts in the National Concert Hall, Dublin and City Hall, Cork (on April 9th and 5th respectively) pretty much sold out, people may need to study the road maps to find the shortest route to the University of Limerick Concert Hall to get a ticket for April 3rd - performing arias, duets and scenes from Norma, Otello, La Gioconda and Il Corsaro with the soprano Virginia Kerr. And if his reception this time is anything like as tumultuous as last May, these will indeed be nights to remember. "Oh, yes, marvellous," recalls Cura with enthusiasm. "I hope it will be again like that. If God gives me good health, be sure I'm going to give the best of myself."
