The Classical Music Awards 1994: Carreras gets popular vote: Personality of the Year

LAST YEAR, readers of the Independent and the BBC Music Magazine chose Evelyn Glennie as Personality of the Year. This time, with a further sheaf of votes from other international music magazines, they went for the outstanding tenor voice of Jose Carreras, writes Robert Maycock.

The Catalan singer has the most breathtaking story of any of the 'Three Tenors', returning from leukaemia to resume a brilliant career in the opera house and, increasingly, the large-scale concert platform. Last year found him at the Royal Opera House in Verdi's Stiffelio - the opera chosen to feature in the Awards video recording - and in La traviata and La boheme at the Vienna State Opera.

But he also filled the Royal Albert Hall for a concert appearance, and has featured in outdoor concerts at Hampton Court Palace and Sudeley Summer Festival. This year he returns to London at the Royal Albert Hall on 15 March, in a concert tribute to Mario Lanza. It was seeing Lanza in The Great Caruso that set the seven-year-old Carreras's mind to becoming an opera singer;now he returns to the stage with his own homage to the star.

In association with Kenwood, supported by BBC Music Magazine and the Independent