Tell me about when you got leukemia, in 1987. You were 40 years old and filming “La Bohème” in Paris. What happened?

I felt exhausted, bad enough that even in the middle of working I told a friend, “Look, I want to go to a hospital to have a checkup.” I went, they made some tests, and a few hours later they told me I had to stay for the night. I said, “What? Are you kidding? There’s a crew waiting for me.”

Altogether, I was in hospitals for 11 months. The chances were really very poor. But I’ve been extremely lucky.

How did the Three Tenors come about?

Let’s face it, people think there is a lot of rivalry between tenors, and particularly at the time with Plácido and Luciano. I talked to my colleagues, and from the first moment they were happy with the idea. It was very soon after my recovery, and they thought that with this they could give me a welcome back.

Did you imagine it would become such a huge success?

It was unbelievable. It was also unbelievable the kind of relationship we had, the three of us. The three of us are tenor lovers, so we had the possibility to enjoy ourselves very much. And on top of that we are completely different personalities, and kinds of artists, and physically also very different from one another. And I think that created a kind of chemistry.