Super-Tenor shines on Bloomington

The events of Jose Cura's still-blossoming opera career have already become the stuff of legend:\nHe learned the role of Ruggero for Puccini's 'La Rondine' while performing in Verdi's 'La Forza del Destino' by attending 'Rondine' staging rehearsals in the basement of the opera house during the second act of 'Forza,' when his character was not present on stage.\nIn 1999, he made history at the Metropolitan Opera as only the second tenor in the company's history to debut on opening night (the first being the grandest of all tenors, Enrico Caruso, in 1902).\nJust a year ago, he further cemented himself into music mythology by first conducting Muscagni's one-act opera 'Cavelleria Rusticana' at the Hamburgische Staatsoper, then mounting the stage after intermission to perform the role of Canio in 'Pagliacci.'\nThe School of Music had the good fortune to catch this growing titan of the opera world between performances for a special guest lecture and masterclass. \nHis lecture, "Singer, Musician…Antonyms?", attracted a large and attentive crowd to Auer Concert Hall Sunday night, where Cura spoke for nearly two hours over the beginnings, triumphs and frustrations from his extensive career as a professional musician. \nSeated on the edge of the stage, dressed in a black sweater and blue jeans, Cura gazed at the seats directly in front of him.\n"Do you know how I feel coming out here to speak, only to find the first two rows empty," he asked in his strong Argentinean accent. "I refuse to start until you all move up and fill in the front rows.\n"You," he called to those in the balcony, "come down here, the ticket price is the same!"\nCura began the lecture with an interesting question.\n"How does the world regard tenors?" he asked. "Like a piece of shouting meat."\nFor the next hour and a half, Cura was part autobiographer, part philosopher, his penchant for storytelling never failing to deliver a comic anecdote or pearl of professional wisdom. \n"Study, work, bloody your fingers," Cura said. "That's the best luck in the world." \nProclaimed by many to be "a true renaissance man," the tenor certainly does not fall easily into any category. \nThough he is now famous for his interpretations of the great tenor roles -- among them Verdi's Otello and Saint-Saens' Samson, which he is currently performing at the Chicago Lyric Opera -- Cura actually began his musical studies with no aspiration to professional singing. \nHis first piano teacher rejected him for having, in Cura's own words, "no gift for music," and so he decided instead to study the guitar.\nErnesto Bitetti, a professor of guitar at the School of Music was instrumental in arranging Cura's visit and has been a long-term friend of the Cura family. He said he remembers young Jose in his pursuit of guitar mastery.\n"I've known him since he was 14 ... he was a very talented guitarist," Bitetti said. "Now, of course, he is better at his singing."\nIn fact, Cura was apparently so taken with the instrument he wrote a letter to the IU School of Music expressing interest in completing a guitar major at the Bloomington campus. (He was, unfortunately, rejected, as the school did not yet have a guitar performance program.)\nCura was soon studying conducting and composition and in 1991, at the insistence of a university choirmaster, departed for Europe to pursue a professional career in voice. The rest, as they say, is history.\nFor all his worldly experience and artistic expertise, Cura displays a remarkable ease with the students around him. \nTenor Emilio Pons, who was the first to sing in Monday morning's masterclass, was chastised by Cura for spending "half the aria deciding whether you were nervous or not."\nCura encouraged Pons to overcome his nerves by drawing a parallel to performing Verdi's 'Aida.' \n"When you open 'Aida,' [it's so difficult] you think 'f-k you, Verdi,'" he said, eliciting laughter from the audience gathered in Sweeney lecture hall. \n"People ask me what technique I use [to prepare]…there is only one technique," Cura said. "Balls."\n"[Cura] is very comfortable," said tenor Eduardo Gracia, who also sang for him that day. "He transmits calm." \nHis easy, straightforward and always diligent manner revealed itself again while Cura coached soprano Carelle Flores in interpreting the text of her Puccini aria.\n"Have you ever been kissed?" he asked her directly. "Was it a revelation of passion?\n"Come on," he said, responding to her embarrassed laughter, "haven't you ever made love? Of course not…you are all nuns here."\nIt is hard to believe that this man, himself so full of passion, still encounters more than his share of resistance in the music industry. \nToward the end of the 1990s, tired of his played-up image as the sex-symbol of opera, Cura declined to renew his contracts with both his agent and recording label. Now, there are opera houses that find it too politically unsavory to engage him. His CDs are harder to find. And yet, he has found a greater peace as a free agent opera star.\n"Now," he said, "I look in the mirror every morning and I am happy. I only go to sing where people want me to sing ... they're not there because they were invited.\n"Plus," he added, "I have contracts until 2010, so I can't complain."\nAnd his audience certainly had no complaints either.\n"Spectacular" was the word of choice for Marianne Kielian-Gilbert, a theory professor.\n"You never see this [kind of event]," she said. "This is right where it should be happening."\nCura concluded Monday's class by performing his final scene from Verdi's 'Otello' -- a scene that has garnered him both praise and criticism for his exceptionally theatrical interpretation. \nCura has brought an extensive amount of research and analysis to the role, not to mention a deep dramatic commitment -- and all were evident to the audience as he played out the suicide of Otello with such abandon as to suggest he had mistaken Sweeney Hall for the Teatro alla Scala. \nHaving heaved Otello's final breath, Cura looked up from the floor where he knelt, breathless from his exertion, and whispered: "If I continue singing for 20 years, it will be like this."\nHis audience, myself included, certainly hopes so.