Ailyn Pérez
(Picture: Marc Brenner)Just as the crowd thrills at a perfectly executed overhead kick in football, so audiences erupt when the Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez delivers the fusillade of high C‘s that are the highlight of Donizetti’s opera La fille du régiment. The difference is that overhead kicks rarely end up in the net; Flórez invariably scores.
He’s been doing it for years but voices change over time and Flórez is now nearly 50. Still in his vocal prime, he has started to take on repertoire that calls for a darker, heavier voice, beginning with the role of Rodolfo, the tenor “hero” in Puccini’s La Bohème. Now he’s brought it to London for this revival of Richard Jones’s 2017 production of the opera.
