Matthias Carras' (†) duet partner Sandra Diano: 'The last thing he said to me on the phone...'

'He was already on fire!'

With the release of her duet, she hopes to be able to at least 'fulfill a little' Matthias Carras' great wish, Sandra Diano tells RTL in an emotional interview. But the release of the song 'Only this moment' was only one of his plans, which he even made in the hospital.

On January 14, the pop singer died at the age of 58 from his cancer . 'He was so very positive,' the 34-year-old recalls. 'He was the most optimistic of them all. I don't even know how it works in a situation like this.' In 2020 Matthias Carras was diagnosed with bone cancer. And yet he fought back, released a new album in 2021 and did a few gigs. Sandra last phoned him in mid-December. 'Musically, he definitely wanted to hit the ground running, back on stage. Something he just hadn't done in the past few years.'

He placed all his hopes on this therapy

Because as early as 2015 he had withdrawn from the public eye, giving up his hit career – for health reasons: Matthias suffered from severe depression. But then, in 2019, he got in touch with Sandra Diano with a musical comeback and recorded the duet with her, which is now being released as a single. 'Suddenly the message came: 'Hey, I'm back! I want to be back on stage! I want to be a pop singer again'', the singer remembers this special moment in the interview. 'You can imagine how happy we all were! I was so hoping for him to come back.”

However, when cancer came along, everything became more difficult. In December, about a month before his death, the pop singer let his fans know on Facebook that he would start a new therapy: A so-called CAR-T cell therapy . T-cells are filtered out of his blood and returned genetically manipulated. These cells serve to protect the immune system, but cannot detect some cancer cells. The aim of the manipulation is to recognize and switch off cancer cells. 'I have a crazy jitters about it,' he admitted in his post. He had previously revealed that he was 'nevertheless in good spirits'. At the end of January, the T-cells should be returned.

'The prognosis with the new therapy he had received looked very good,' says Sandra Diano of this time. 'Well, that was close enough to touch. We really all thought he could do it.”

Sandra Diano remembers the last conversation

The therapy would promise a 95 percent chance of recovery, she explains. In fact, the 'Deutsches Ärzteblatt' also speaks for the new procedure, which was only approved in Germany in July 2022, for certain forms of cancer that 90% of the participants respond positively to it. However, there are also serious side effects. Matthias also felt it, as he said on Facebook: 'I probably underestimated the side effects of CAR-T cell therapy,' he wrote.

Nevertheless, the 34-year-old knows: 'He was so positive and he stuck to it so that it worked.' But suddenly everything went 'insanely fast'. 'The last thing he said to me was that when he gets out of the hospital we should come to him and he will cook for us.' He was a passionate cook. 'If we can do this here, then we won't put off anything anymore, then let's finally do it! We really had planned so many things!” He wanted to record a new album, even a complete duet album with Sandra Diano was planned. He probably stuck to it – until his death.