Born in Lima, Peru, JUAN DIEGO FLÓREZ undertook music studies both in his native Lima and at Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. In 1996 he made his official operatic debut in Matilde di Shabran at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, where his expressive voice and astonishing agility immediately won him critical accolades. Since then, Flórez has become the tenor of choice in major international theaters.
Flórez has enjoyed great success in theaters such as La Scala of Milan (Gluck’s Armide, Falstaff, Nino Rota’s Il cappello di paglia di Firenze, Il barbiere di Siviglia, La pazza per amore (Nina), La sonnambula, L’italiana in Algeri, La Cenerentola, Comunale of Bologna (Il viaggio a Reims, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Fille du regiment, Le Comte Ory, I Puritani), Filarmonico of Verona (L’italiana in Algeri, Barbiere di Siviglia), Opera of Rome (Il barbiere di Siviglia, L’italiana in Algeri), San Carlo of Naples, and Massimo of Palermo...
Internationally, Flórez has appeared at The Metropolitan Opera House of New York, Lyric Opera of Chicago , San Francisco Opera , LA Opera ; Covent Garden in London ; Staatsoper of Vienna, Salzburg Festival, Musikverein of Vienna , Konzerthaus in Vienna ; Paris Opera, Châtelet in Paris, Festival Radio France Montpellier ; Deutsche Oper Berlin , Munich’s Bayerische Staatsoper ; Real of Madrid, Gran Teatre del Liceu of Barcelona , La Maestranza of Seville ; Dresden Staatsoper, Opernhaus in Zurich. Sang also in Moscow, Tokio, Varsovia, Caracas, Lisboa, Sao Paulo, San Petersburg, Toulouse, Nice, Champs Elysées of Paris, Lyon, and Hamburg.
He has sung under the batons of Riccardo Muti, James Levine, Riccardo Chailly, Myung-Wun Chung, John Elliot Gardiner, Daniele Gatti, Gianluigi Gelmetti, Neville Marriner, Antonio Pappano, Roberto Abbado, Carlo Rizzi, Nello Santi, Marcello Viotti, Christophe Rousset, Jesùs Lopez Cobos, Michele Mariotti, Alberto Zedda, and Gustavo Dudamel.
In 2007, he broke the tradition at La Scala by singing an encore, the theater’s first in 75 years. This happened in Donizetti’s Fille du regiment with the aria of nine high Cs. The same happened at The Met in 2008.
Future engagements for Flórez through 2015 are scheduled for La Scala in Milan, the Metropolitan Opera House of New York, Covent Garden in London, Staatsoper in Vienna, Paris Opera, Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, Real of Madrid, Liceu of Barcelona, and Deutsche Oper Berlin. Since March 2001 he has been an exclusive artist for Decca.
He has received the Abbiati Prize, conferred by Italian music critics, the Rossini d’Oro in Pesaro, Aureliano Pertile’s Prize, the Francesco Tamagno Prize, L’Opera Award Prize, Bellini’s Prize, the ISO d’Oro, and the Plácido Domingo Award. His recordings have garnered many important prizes, such as the CHOC du Monde de la Musique, the ECHO Klassik Preis, and the Cannes Classical Award. He also received the Peruvian government’s highest honor: the Orden del Sol, Gran Cruz.
