In 2003, four years before his death, acclaimed Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti was asked who would be his successor.
“If I had to name one, I would say Juan Diego Florez,” he said, hailing the Peruvian singer as a “great talent”.
Further praise came from Spanish maestro Placido Domingo, who with his compatriot Jose Carreras and Pavarotti formed the Three Tenors.
Florez, he said, was “the greatest light tenor of all time”.
Now 51 and performing in Jacques Offenbach’s “The Tales of Hoffmann” at London’s Royal Opera House until December 1, Perez said he still looks back with pride at the words of two of his idols.
But he is also looking to the future — and the quest to find new audiences for opera far beyond its traditional roots.
“In some places I have visited in China it seems to me that there is a very young audience and that is what is needed,” he told AFP.
As an opera evangelist, Florez firmly believes that newcomers will find the centuries-old art form, often derided as elitist, to be surprisingly contemporary.
But he has long been aware of the mass appeal of music: his father was a singer and guitarist and he learned his craft performing everything from Peruvian folk songs to Elvis Presley at the bar that his mother ran.
It was only after he enrolled as a music student in Lima that he discovered the works of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart — and found his classical voice.
“I thought it (opera) was the most beautiful thing there was,” he said.
– Opportunity –
The discovery was a launchpad to a career that has seen him perform on the world’s leading stages, from Milan’s La Scala to the Met in New York.
Florez, though, remains motivated by making music accessible to all. In 2011, he set up Sinfonia por el Peru, which uses music to help disadvantaged children in his home country.
So far it has helped nearly 35,000 youngsters, he said.
“We have 6,500 children now in orchestras, choirs and various programmes in Lima and throughout Peru,” he added.
“It is about giving children and young people with fewer resources and who live in vulnerable areas the possibility of living their dreams, of having a dignified life and being able to develop as people in the best way.
“This is done through practising music together and it’s yielded incredible results, because we’d done major studies showing how the children who go to Sinfonia por el Peru centres excel in other aspects of their lives.”
Florez is combining his busy singing career and work with the award-winning Sinfonia but has also taken on a role as artistic director of the Rossini Festival in Pesaro, Italy, where he made his breakthrough as a 23-year-old stand-in.
Also in the pipeline is an ambition to create a music academy of his own and he has already founded an eponymous record label, Florez.
Just as his idols Pavarotti and Domingo created a lasting musical legacy, bringing music to the masses, he also wants to be remembered, he said, “as a tenor who believed that music could change lives”.
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