Tenor
• Recipient of the Orphée d’Or (France, 1998)
• Recipient of the Premio Franco Abbiati (Italy, 1996)
• Prize-winner at the 2nd World Opera Competition Operalia (Mexico City, 1994; 1st prize and Audience Prize)
After studying composition and conducting in his home town, Rosario, José Cura moved to Buenos Aires in 1984 to hone his skills. To gain insights into stage life, he worked in one of the professional choirs at the Teatro Colón from 1984 to 1988, where his voice developed into the distinctive bold and bright tenor with tints of dark baritone that led him to international fame.
In 1999 José Cura resumed his conducting career, working with top orchestras like London’s Philharmonia, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Wiener Philharmoniker, Warsaw’s Sinfonia Varsovia, Parma’s Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini and Budapest’s Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra among others, performing operatic and symphonic works, thrilling audiences with his performances both in the pit and on stage.
2007 saw the world premiere of La commedia è finita: the creative re-imagining of Pagliacci coupled with dance and mime, designed and directed by José Cura, marked the beginning of his career as a stage director and designer. In 2010 he set designed, directed and starred in Saint-Saëns’ Samson et Dalila at the Badisches Staatstheater, crafting an innovative, modern take on the classic. The production is available on DVD. The unanimous plaudits of the audience and critics for his La rondine at the Opéra de Nancy and Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci at the Opéra Royal de Wallonie, both in 2012, sealed his stature as a director of distinction. In 2013 his production of Otello at the Teatro Colón was selected as one of the most successful productions of the year by international voting. His show A Scandinavian Bohème (2015), a new production of Puccini’s La bohème for the Royal Swedish Opera, was considered by the press and public to as being one of the most successful productions ever to have been presented at the prestigious venue. In 2016 his production of Turandot at the Opéra Royal de Wallonie received enormous acclaim. In 2017 his co-production of Peter Grimes in Bonn and Monte-Carlo, in which he also debuted in the title role, was labeled as “a masterful evening”. Lately, in 2018, his new production of Nabucco for Prague’s State Opera was claimed to be “a brilliant and thoughtful and integrated fusion of sets, lighting, and costumes”, and his new production of La fanciulla del West was premiered to great acclaim at Tallinn’s Estonian National Opera.
2014 was marked by José Cura’s return to his activity as a composer: in November the Opera of the South Bohemian Theatre (České Budějovice) premiered his Stabat Mater, written in 1989, and in Easter 2015, after his return as Don José (Carmen) at the Teatro alla Scala, the world premiere of his Magnificat, created in 1988, took place at the Teatro Massimo di Catania (Italy).
From 2015 to 2018 Maestro Cura was Artist-in-Residence of the Prague Symphony Orchestra. There he conducted the world premiere of his triptych Ecce Homo in March 2017, and in September of that year – the world premiere of Modus (the Kyrie of his Requiem Mass) as well as the symphonic versions of Ariel Ramirez’ famous Misa Criolla and Navidad Nuestra, commissioned by Ramirez himself.
In February 2019 Maestro Cura was appointed the first Principal Guest Artist – singer, composer and conductor – in the history of the Hungarian Radio Art Groups. Together with the Hungarian institution he recorded the oratorio Ecce Homo, and in January 2020 he conducted the world premiere of his Montezuma and the Red Priest – “opera buffa ma non troppo” – at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest.
The hiatus in his stage work that followed – imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic – gave José Cura the time to complete two pending composing projects: Te Deum and a guitar concerto. His Te Deum, drafted in 2019 and orchestrated in 2020, was successfully premiered with London’s Philharmonia and the Romanian Radio choirs in September 2021 during Bucharest’s George Enescu Festival, and his Concierto para un Resurgir for guitar and orchestra was premiered in that September in Saarbrücken, together with his Symphonic Suite based on Montezuma and the Red Priest.
José Cura’s Requiem Mass, Requiem æternam, for triple choir, soloists and orchestra, has been successfully premiered in Budapest in May 2022, with the MTVA art groups and the Hungarian National Choir.
In 2015 José Cura was honoured by the Argentinean Senate, with the Domingo Faustino Sarmiento Prize for his achievements in education and culture, and in 2017 he was entitled Professor Honoris Causa of the National University of Rosario, Argentina, where he followed his composer studies in the decade of the 1980s.
Information for June 2025
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