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Juan Diego Flórez... Quote. Unquote.
Carlo Bergonzi in an interview in the Los Angeles Times published on May 20, 2006...
"He's a good tenor in his repertory Rossini, Bellini, 'Fille du régiment.' I had my 80th birthday party at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, lunch with 150 people. And there was also Flórez. He came up to me and said, 'I don't know what to give you for your 80th birthday. I can only sing an aria for you.'
I said, 'Please,' and he sang from 'Daughter of the Regiment.' Beautiful. A rare voice.
There were all these people sitting there from the Metropolitan. I said, 'Don't be fooled by these people. If they offer you roles like 'Lucia,' 'Bohème,' say no. For now, don't accept them in two or three years, I don't know because if you accept these roles now, you are going to ruin one of the most beautiful light, lyric tenor voices."
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Juan Diego Flórez asked how he keeps his public life and private life separate in a joint interview with Russell Watson published in the August 2006 issue of BBC Music...
"I think this is more a question for Russell perhaps, because once I leave the opera house, I'm pretty much anonymous. That's the advantage about having a profile in a field that isn't too enormous. I like to think of myself as an artist, but not really as a celebrity. I don't think opera is something that's going to attract mass audiences - it's just not that type of art form. If people like me for what I do on the stage, that's great. But I don't expect them to follow me into my private life. Anyway, most of them aren't really that interested"
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Juan Diego Flórez on labelling singers as 'crossover' or 'classical' in a joint interview with Russell Watson published in the August 2006 issue of BBC Music...
"I think labels are quite transient things. A lot of what is being marketed as crossover these days, isn't really crossing from one thing into something else at all. It's more to do with the way things are packaged up and presented to the public, and that disturbs me because I think the public is losing sight of where the boundaries lie - and yes, I do believe that boundaries do exist between high art and popular art. For example, my father had a very attractive, well-produced voice when he was young, but he'd never have considered himself as anything other than a pop singer. But today, I'm sure he'd be able to get away with being called an operatic tenor. The goal posts have been moved, so that's got all very complicated. And I worry that audiences these days wait to be told what's what rather than making demands for themselves."
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Michelle Edgar of Women's Wear Daily, 31 August 2006, on the off-stage wardrobe of Juan Diego Flórez...
"With a performance wardrobe that's limited to stage costumes and tuxedos, Florez doesn't have to do much shopping, but admits a fondness for Ermenegildo Zegna. 'I wear a little bit of everything....My style is both classical and modern. I go with the fashion, always with a bit of elegance.'"
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Justin Davidson on the top 10 New York classical music performances for 2006 in
Newsday, 31 December 2006...
Newsday, 31 December 2006...
"1. Juan Diego Flórez at the Metropolitan Opera. The Peruvian tenor with the foam-flecked voice had a great year, even if he did wind up canceling his Carnegie Hall debut. (It's been rescheduled for March.) The Metropolitan Opera lavished on him new productions of "Don Pasquale" and "The Barber of Seville," and he rewarded the company's faith by selling lots of tickets. He and his voice are both light and full of charm, so much so that he could practically make this a golden age of Rossini all by himself."
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Natalie Dessay on the cast of La Fille du régiment at Covent Garden in the
Sunday Times, 7 January 2007...
"It's my first Marie, and here at Covent Garden we have a fantastic cast: Juan Diego Flórez as Tonio, Alessandro Corbelli as Sulpice, Felicity Palmer as the Marquise, Dawn French as the Duchesse!" Laurent Pelly's staging is a three-way London-Vienna-New York co-production. "We will do it in April in Vienna, then next season at the Met in New York," says Dessay. "Always with Flórez. Tonio is an impossible role to cast, and only he can do it at the moment. He's the best. We are a good couple on stage. For this type of repertoire, I always ask if he is free before I sign any contracts."
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Mario Hamlet-Metz in the December 2006 issue of L'Opera on Flórez's performance in Il barbiere di Siviglia at the New York Met ...
"Non si poteva chiedere un miglior Almaviva di quello che ci offriva Juan Diego Flórez, che con la sua eleganza, con la sua perfezione stilistica e con una tecnica vocale di assoluta perfezione, confermava ancora una volta il fatto di essere oggigiorno il padrone incontestabile del belcanto rossiniano. Durante la sua magistrale esecuzione di 'Cessa di più resistere', il pubblico rimaneva come incantato, in un totale silenzio, e premiava giustamente l'artista con uno dei più lunghi e strepitosi applausi degli ultimi tempi."
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From the New York Met, Juan Diego Flórez on what he has on his iPod...
"Nights on Broadway by the Bee Gees, Honky Tonk Women by the Rolling Stones, Schumann's Dichterliebe sung by Fritz Wunderlich, Vereda Tropical, a Cuban song by Daniel Santos & Sonora Matancera, Paloma Querida a Mexican song by Jorge Negrete.
I mostly use my iPod at the gym to help me get through my exercises, or on long airplane flights."
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BBC Radio 3 presenter Sara Mohr-Pietsch on 'Please never let this happen to me on air again'...
"During last year's Proms, I accidentally called Juan Diego Florez a 'lyric terror'. It's a nice image, but totally unwarranted in his case, and really quite embarrassing!
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Mario Vargas Llosa in the Prologue to Juan Diego Flórez: Notas de una voz...
"He oído cantar a Juan Diego Flórez en Salzburgo, París y Madrid, y en todas partes ha ocurrido lo mismo: un público delirando de entusiasmo y admiración por la potencia, sutileza y elegancia de la voz del joven tenor. He oído por doquier decir de él a críticos exigentes y grandes aficionados a la música que se trata de un caso inusitado, una de esas figuras que marcan una época y que, por ejemplo, no hay hoy en el mundo nadie que pueda interpretar las más difíciles composiciones de Rossini, Bellini y Donizetti como lo hace él.
He tenido la suerte de conocerlo y su sencillez y su modestia me han impresionado tanto como su talento, porque la experiencia me ha demostrado que no es nada frecuente que la calidad humana y la genialidad artística coincidan en una misma persona.
Juan Diego Flórez no es solamente un artista excepcionalmente dotado para la música. Es, también, alguien que ha hecho inmensos esfuerzos y sacrificios para educar y disciplinar su disposición natural y que ahora, con todo el reconocimiento que ha conseguido, sigue trabajando con empeño sin tregua por superarse a sí mismo. Me sumo feliz, con toda mi admiración y mi afecto a este homenaje que la Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas rinde a Juan Diego Flórez. Londres, 5 de abril de 2007"
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This page was last updated on: September 25, 2007
