Rosenblatt Recitals

Artist Biographies

Juan Diego Flórez was born in Lima on 13th January 1973. In 1990, having attended classes at various academies, he gained a place at Peru’s National Conservatory of Music. Shortly after beginning his studies there, Juan Diego began taking singing lessons with Andrés Santa María, director of Peru’s Coro Nacional. He then won a scholarship to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, and studied there between 1993 and 1996.

In 1994, Juan Diego met celebrated Peruvian tenor Ernesto Palacio in Lima, and made a recording with him of Martín y Soler’s Il tutore burlato at the Gerace Festival in Italy. Following this, in 1996, Juan Diego auditioned for the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro and was immediately cast by its Artistic Director in a small role in Ricciardo e Zoraide. In summer 1996 whilst in Pesaro rehearsing for this opera, he was offered the leading role of ‘Corradino’ in Matilde di Shabran when the existing tenor became ill. The 13th August 1996 subsequently marked the start of his stellar career.

Juan Diego made his La Scala debut on 7th December 1996 under the baton of Riccardo Muti and since then he has appeared at all the world’s leading opera houses, concert halls and music festivals, including the Metropolitan Opera, New York, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, La Scala, Milan, Vienna Staatsoper, Paris Opéra, Teatro Real, Madrid, Gran Teatre Liceu, Barcelona, Teatro San Carlo, Naples, Teatro Regio, Turin, Teatro Comunale, Bologna, Rome Opera, Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Florence, Teatro Carlo Felice, Genoa, Munich Staatsoper, Deutsche Oper Berlin and Zurich Opernhaus, Salzburg Festival and the Rossini Opera Festival, Pesaro.

His repertoire includes thirty-two operas including Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi, La sonnambula and I puritani, Donizetti’s Alahor in Granata, Don Pasquale, Elisabetta, L’elisir d’amore, La Fille du régiment and Maria Stuarda, Gluck’s Armide and Orfeo, Lehár’s Die lustige Witwe, Mozart’s Mitridate, Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, Rossini’s Adelaide de Borgogna, Il barbiere di Siviglia, La Cenerentola, Le Comte Ory, L’italiana in Algeri, Matilde di Shabran, Otello, Semiramide, Il signor Bruschino, Il viaggio a Reims and Zelmira, Rota’s Il cappello di paglia di Firenze, Strauss’s Die Fledermaus and Verdi’s Falstaff and Rigoletto.

He has worked with the world’s most renowned conductors, including Roberto Abbado, Riccardo Chailly, Myung-Whun Chung, Daniele Gatti, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, James Levine, Jesús López-Cobos, Sir Neville Marriner, Riccardo Muti, Antonio Pappano, Carlo Rizzi, Nello Santi, Marcello Viotti and Alberto Zedda.

Since 2001, Juan Diego has been an exclusive Decca artist, and in total, including his discs for other companies, he has recorded 8 solo albums, 12 complete operas on CD and 11 on DVD, and made another 7 albums which include recordings of cantatas and oratorios. The recordings have won many awards, including the Diapason d’Or, Echo Klassik Preis, Cannes Classical Award, Gramophone Award and a Grammy nomination for the album Bel Canto Spectacular.

Juan Diego has received a number of honours including Peru’s highest distinction, the Order of the Sun, Grand Cross. Awards include the Rossini d’Oro, the Abbiati Prize given by the Italian Association of Music Critics, the Opera Award and the Aureliano Pertile, Bellini, Francesco Tamagno and Plácido Domingo Awards.

Future engagements in 2011 include concerts in Valencia, Monte Carlo and Marseilles in January, and in Bratislava, Brussels, Fresno and Washington in the USA, as well as Medellin and Bogotà in Colombia in February. In March, Juan Diego sings in Le Comte Ory at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, followed by Il Barbiere di Siviglia and a concert in Lima, Peru in May. In September he sings in I Puritani in Japan, recitals in Paris and at La Scala, Milan, La Donna del Lago also in Milan in October, and a recital and Linda di Chamounix in Barcelona in December.