ALMOST 3,26 MILLION EUROS RAISED DURING THE 23. JOSÉ CARRERAS GALA

December 16, 2017

ALMOST 3,26 MILLION EUROS RAISED DURING THE 23. JOSÉ CARRERAS GALA

"It was a great evening, which helps us to save lives and alleviate suffering in the future. Our audience gave us generous support again this year. I am overwhelmed and very grateful."

http://www.josecarrerasgala.de/

http://www.gettyimages.it/

This is what Josep Carreras, host and presenter of the 23rd José Carreras Gala, stated after announcing a collected amount of 3.258.687 (a bit more than last year) Euros at the end of the broadcast. The José Carreras Gala 2017 has been held for the first time in Munich, at the Bavaria Studios, last 14 December 2017 and live broadcast by SAT.1 Gold at 8:15 pm. He was accompanied by moderators Nina Eichinger and Matthias Killing.

Once again it was a really successful edition, extremely interesting both on artistic and, perhaps even more, human side.

We got to know the stories of so many super heroes: some of them won their battle against leukaemia, some others unfortunately couldn't make it, and some others again are fighting as authentic warriors; all of them are really inspiring examples. As usual, the videos of some of Josep Carreras' visits to patients have been shared during the program, in an extremely respectful way. For those of you who couldn't watch the program, here there are some impressions.

Many guest stars took part to this year's edition, such as Anastacia (second song here), David Garrett, Stefanie Heinzmann, Roland Kaiser, Jonas Kaufmann, Katie Melua, Sophie Pacini, Ivy Quainoo, Spider Murphy Gang, voXXclub, Wincent Weiss and Judith Williams. (click on the names to be redirected to their video performance).

On his side, Josep Carreras performed Mattinata on his own, but probably the most exciting moment was the duet in O Holy Night together with Jonas Kaufmann: after Kaufmann's remarkable rendition of Dein ist mein ganzes Herz, Carreras asked his younger and sincerely admired collegue, who clearly loves and admires him back, to join him in such a lovely and magic Christmas song accompanied by pianist Sophie Pacini, another great talent from Munich who, as Carreras joked "she can play it ever for two voices".

The marvellous singers they are can't actually hide their thrill for performing the one next to the other: a true show of mutual respect between different generations of excellence. Really emotional.

Before that, as new ambassador of the José Carreras Leukämie Stiftung, Jonas Kaufmann had a few words for Josep Carreras, both for the artist and the man, and then sang a special refrain which combined the telephone number for donations as lyrics and the music of The Godfather's theme.

At the end, Carreras applauded him and said that Nino Rota, the composer, would be very happy.

After the final (still partial) raised amount was announced, all the attending artists joined Carreras for a final song, White Christmas, as a perfect closure of an edition we will remember for many reasons.