José Carreras, who became a household name as one of the Three Tenors with Luciano Pavarotti and Plácido Domingo, announces his retirement from opera in an interview with The Times today.

The Spanish singer, 62, a survivor of leukaemia, declared that he can no longer withstand the rigours of performing principal roles, unamplified, to opera houses. “If I can do concert recitals, adapting the repertoire to my needs, then no problem, that’s good enough,” he said. “But with operas, unless the right circumstances come up, my career is done.”

Carreras’s exit from the opera scene leaves only Domingo, who is six years his senior, performing operatic roles. Pavarotti died in 2007, at 71, after a long struggle with pancreatic cancer. Domingo is scheduled to perform at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, twice next year. He will take a principal role in Tamerlano by Handel in March and will perform as a baritone for the first time in Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra in the summer.

It is widely believed that these will be his farewells to opera. Basses tend to last into their late sixties; tenors usually retire from lyric roles in Italian opera earlier as they begin to lose their ability to spin the high lines.

The Three Tenors achieved popularity well beyond the usual audience enjoyed by opera singers, due in no small part to their participation in the World Cup in Italy in 1990. Carreras said: “We were, without being presumptuous, the most popular tenors of the day. We did [Italia 90] in a very genuine and spontaneous way. We thought, let’s get together. We were all football fans.”

Their participation in a benefit concert on the eve of the World Cup in 1990, was watched by 800 million viewers. A recording of it became the bestselling album in the history of classical music. More than a billion people were estimated to have watched a live broadcast of a Three Tenors concert in Los Angeles in 1994.

Carreras’s opera career nearly ended in 1987 when he was told that he had acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, a cancer of the white blood cells. He visited a dentist thinking he had toothache, but eventually went to hospital when the pain persisted. “They told me the diagnosis and that it was lymphoblastic leukaemia,” he said in a recent interview. “It was a shock. I was ignorant about medicine then but I did know that leukaemia was a blood cancer and what the consequences were. Let’s say it was a difficult thing to digest.”

He was given a 10 per cent chance of surviving and underwent chemotherapy, radiation therapy and a bone-marrow transplant. He returned to the stage in triumph and continues to give 50 recitals a year. “I have been very lucky to overcome this very serious disease with not many chances to survive. I remember this every day. The help from above is very important.”

Carreras will be awarded a Lifetime Achievement award at the Classical Brits on May 14 at the Albert Hall. It is expected that Domingo will present it to him.

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