Sunday, January 13, 2013

Happy Birthday, Juan Diego Florez!

Wow!  Forty-years-old and he's still sexy!  And his voice hasn't changed much either. 

I remember the first time I even saw this Peruvian tenor.  It was a few weeks after the great Luciano Pavarotti died, and the BBC had decided to do a memorial documentary on him.  They were talking about Pavarotti being called the King of the High Cs' because of his remarkable performance of "Ah Mes Amis", from Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment (The Daughter of the Regiment).  After a sound clip of Pavarotti singing the aria, the scene suddenly switched to this younger tenor called Juan Diego Florez talking about his success with the aria, knowing that Pavarotti had mastered before he did.  And they also showed him singing th nine high Cs in M. Pelly's production of the opera.  By then, I had started to follow the operas during the Met's regular broadcast season.  For my seventeenth birthday the following April, I got tickets to go see the Met simulcast of M. Pelly's production of La Fille du Regiment.  Florez was singing the tenor lead alongside soprano Natalie Dessay.  That was the first time I saw him live.  It took a few months but I was a Juan Diego Florez fangirl by the time my senior year of high school started.  

I just want to say "Happy Birthday, Juan Diego Florez!".  I just want to, that's all.  

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