The veteran Spanish tenor José Carreras, 79, will return to Australia later this year to headline a major outdoor concert at Brisbane’s Gabba alongside pop-rock stars Robbie Williams, Ronan Keating and Natalie Imbruglia and the Irish folk pop group The Corrs. 

The Carreras & Friends bill also features former Savage Garden frontman Darren Hayes, Brisbane pop group Sheppard, Heart singer Ann Wilson, Welsh mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins and Australian tenor Mark Vincent. 

The show is part of the same cultural investment strategy from the Queensland Government that brought Sting to the Queensland Performing Arts Centre’s new Glasshouse Theatre with his touring musical The Last Ship.

José Carreras. Portrait supplied

Accompanied by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and choir in a production involving around 90 musicians, the “hits and duets” format concert – inspired by the Pavarotti & Friends events that brought together opera and popular music stars in Italy during the 1990s and early 2000s – comes two years after the unexplained cancellation of Carreras’ planned 2024 tour with fellow Three Tenors star Plácido Domingo.

Carreras has enjoyed a long relationship with Australian audiences. In 2017 he toured the country with his farewell-themed A Life in Music tour, performing in Sydney, Perth and Melbourne with the Melbourne and West Australian Symphony Orchestras under the baton of his nephew, conductor David Giménez. Later that year he returned to headline a Bravo! Cruise of the Performing Arts, sailing from Sydney with a roster of Australian classical performers.

Born in Barcelona, Carreras famously fell in love with opera at age six when he saw Mario Lanza in the 1951 Hollywood bio-drama The Great Caruso. After hours in the bathroom practicing La donne è mobile, he sang a Verdi aria on national radio the following year. At age 11, he made his professional debut at Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Lice as the boy soprano Trujamán in Falla’s Master Peter’s Puppet Show, followed by a small role in La Bohème a few months later.

Launching himself as a tenor in 1970, his career quickly took off. He made a series of important international debuts in 1974 at venues including the Royal Opera House in London, the Vienna State Opera and the Metropolitan Opera in New York and was hailed a young talent to watch. In 1976, he gave his first performance with Herbert von Karajan in Verdi’s Requiem at the Salzburg Festival. Karajan – who once described Carreras as “The Don José I had always dreamed of” – would go on to conduct him in numerous operas on stage and on disc, among them Don Carlo, Aida, Tosca and Carmen. 

At the height of his career in the 1970s and 1980s, Carreras was regarded as one of opera’s leading lyric tenors, acclaimed for performances in roles including Rodolfo in La Bohème, Alfredo in La Traviata and Riccardo in Un Ballo in Maschera. 

His career was dramatically interrupted in 1987 when he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. After intensive treatment and a remarkable recovery, he resumed performing and became an advocate for leukaemia research through the José Carreras International Leukaemia Foundation.

Carreras retired from principal opera roles in 2009 but has continued to perform selectively, with the Brisbane concert billed as part of his “Final World Tour”.

Carreras & Friends takes place at the Brisbane Cricket Ground on 5 December. 

Presale for Carreras and Friends commences at 10am on Friday, 12 June, with tickets on general sale from 10am on Monday, 15 June.