Juan Diego Flórez (born Jan. 13, 1973, Lima, Peru) is a Peruvian opera singer, widely acclaimed for his command of the high tenor range.
Flórez, whose father was a performer of popular music, entered Peru’s National Conservatory of Music at age 17. He was originally interested in popular music but later shifted his focus to the development of his classical vocal technique. He received a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, which he attended from 1993 to 1996, and he then studied with the Peruvian tenor Ernesto Palacio, who subsequently became his manager. Flórez’s first break came in 1996 when on short notice he replaced a singer in Matilde di Shabran at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, Italy. He made his debut at La Scala in Milan later that year and at Covent Garden in London the next year. Within a few years he was singing in other major opera houses and on concert stages throughout Europe and the Americas.
Flórez’s light and agile tenor voice and impeccable technique allowed him remarkable control of the high register. He specialized in the bel canto repertoire of Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini but won renown as a singer of the works of Gioachino Rossini as well. Some of his performances in opera were issued on DVDs, including his roles as Count Almaviva in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia (2005) and as Tonio in Donizetti’s La Fille du régiment (2008). Flórez also was featured in many audio recordings, including performances of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s rarely heard early work Mitridate, re di Ponto (1999), Rossini’s Le Comte Ory (2004), and assorted sacred works of Rossini, including Stabat Mater (1998). In addition, Flórez released several solo recordings, among the most notable of which were Una furtiva lagrima (2003), works of Bellini and Donizetti; Sentimiento Latino (2006), a compilation of South American and Spanish songs; and Arias for Rubini (2007), works of Donizetti, Bellini, and Rossini, honouring the great 19th-century tenor Giovanni Rubini. Juan Diego Flórez: Bel Canto Spectacular (2008) featured both solo performances and collaborations with such singers as tenor Plácido Domingo. Flórez’s recordings won a number of awards, and in 2007 the tenor received the Order of the Grand Cross of the Sun of Peru, the country’s highest honour.
In April 2008, singing in La Fille du régiment at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, Flórez—by prior arrangement with the management—broke with long-standing tradition when he performed an encore of the aria “Ah! mes amis,” with its nine spectacular high Cs. The repetition of arias had been common until the 20th century, when the practice was discouraged at the Met and at other opera houses as performances became more serious, formal affairs; Flórez’s encore was a sign that opera might be loosening up once again. Similarly, in 2007 he had broken a 74-year encore ban at La Scala.