Tenor Juan Diego Flórez

The Peruvian tenor is talking about his huge success singing the early 19th century bel canto repertoire. His heartland is the operas of Bellini and Donizetti, and especially the pyrotechnics of Rossini. "The sound of my voice suits Rossini. I love his lightness."

In 1996, when he was just 23, he took over the difficult lead role in Rossini's Matilde di Shabran at the 11th hour at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro, after the scheduled tenor had to cancel. "Being the reckless person I was, I accepted. Even if it had gone wrong, I had nothing to lose."

He triumphed; immediately Riccardo Muti invited him to open La Scala's season that year. Debuts followed soon after at Covent Garden and Vienna, and in 2002 at the Met he sang a favourite early role, Count Almaviva in Rossini's Barber of Seville. "He remains my point of reference. Singing Rossini helps me keep in shape."

It was Luciano Pavarotti who helped propel Flórez to stardom, dubbing him “the King of the High Cs.” Asked in a TV interview whom he considered the best new talent, Pavarotti cited the singer's name, adding “he's 'a beautiful tenor, and he sings with intelligence and has a great voice.”

At the Met in 2008, Flórez was the first tenor since Pavarotti to be allowed to perform an encore. (The practice was banned in most opera houses in 20th century.) Flórez was singing the role of Tonio in Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment which has nine high Cs. As New Yorker music critic Alex Ross recorded, “Flórez, after a slightly breathless start, securely zapped his nine high Cs in the cabaletta of Ah! Mes Amis, and then proceeded to zap them all again.”

Flórez has been regularly cited as Pavarotti's successor, but in fact he has a very different and rare tenor voice and cites the Spanish tenor Alfredo Kraus as his primary vocal model. "From him I learnt a lot! I've learned because I'm similar to him – although he sang heavier roles, he didn't sing much Rossini – his breath, his high notes, and his elegant, aristocratic line."

Flórez' voice is lighter and higher than Pavarotti's, and very sweet. It's also incredibly agile and his high notes come effortlessly. He's a natural stage animal too, physically light on his feet with energy to burn. He has gifts for comedy and dancing, and is also blessed with matinee idol good looks.

In the last decade, his voice has changed and so has his repertoire, broadening to French Romantic roles, Verdi and Puccini, all of which he says will feature in his debut recital programs in Australia this month. He also loves to sing his native Peruvian folksongs and popular songs, something he's done since his teens singing in the pub in Lima where his Mum worked.

In 2007 he was decorated with the Orden El Sol del Perú (The Sun of Peru Order) in the rank of Gran Cruz (Great Cross), the highest decoration from the Peruvian government. "This award is for all the young people who, like me, had a dream and fought to make it come true, who overcame obstacles, fears, insecurities and fulfilled this dream."

Flórez has two young children with his wife, German-born Australian Julia Trappe, and says he has long wanted to sing here. "I'm very happy to come finally and sing for the Australian public in concert."

Last January, Flórez turned 50 and says in recent years he's slowed down. "I especially don't do long [seasons] of operas. The new operas I will be doing are very specific, and I choose to do them. I would like to add new roles in the future, of course, and maybe sing more Verdi. You are born with a voice. And in a way, you don't choose what you want to sing. It's the quality of your voice that matches a certain repertoire, and that's what you're going to sing."

As a boy growing up in Lima, Flórez was exposed to music early. "My father was a professional Peruvian music singer. He specialized in criolla music by Chabuca Granda [the famous Peruvian singer, songwriter] and others. And he had a wonderful way of singing, which was a little bit operatic. His teacher suggested that he become a tenor, but he didn't want to. So I grew up listening to this kind of singing, and I think in a way, it prepared me for maybe for the style of opera. Música criolla is a very distinctive music from the coast in Peru. The songs are really beautiful."

Early on, Flórez played guitar and sang as a replacement singer in the pub his mother managed when the regular singer was ill. "It was a tremendous experience for me, since most of those who were regulars at the pub were of a certain age, so I had to be ready to sing anything from huaynos to Elvis Presley music and, in my mind, that served me a great deal because, in the final analysis, any music that is well structured – whether it is jazz, opera, or pop – is good music."

In his teens he had a rock band, playing keyboards, guitar, and drums. He loved the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and his personal favourite, the Rolling Stones. "We played classic rock covers." And, like his father, he also sang Peruvian music and composed. "Yes, I wrote songs, I was becoming kind of an Enrique Iglesias kind of a singer, with those ballads and cheesy romantic things."

At high school he sang in the choir and in Spanish operettas known as zarzuelas. "My teacher showed us how to sing in a lyrical, operatic way. Since I sang already pop music, he put me to sing in these shows, and he taught me in a rudimentary way to imitate an operatic voice. Then I took private lessons with him, but I couldn't pay him because I didn't have money."

Flórez' teacher advised him to go to the Conservatorio Nacional de Música in Lima, which was free. "I wanted to learn how to sing in an operatic way because I thought it would help my pop voice." But there he discovered the world of classical music and opera "and I decided I wanted to do that." He cites singing as a member of Peru's Coro Nacional in this period as another decisive part of his musical development.

His next move was to New York. "It was my first time outside Peru and also the first time I understood that I had some talent, because everyone wanted me – the Juilliard, the Manhattan School, the Curtis Institute – so I thought 'I must be good then!'”

In 1993 Flórez took up a scholarship to Curtis. "They didn't have a tenor so they put me to sing all the operas." Initially he says he wasn't comfortable on stage. "It's very difficult for an opera singer. You have to have a good technique which allows you to be confident as an actor. That's difficult to achieve. The goal is to become a great actor-singer, and I think I'm getting better and better in that direction, but at the beginning I was so stiff," he said in 2009.

Visiting Lima on holidays in 1994 he met the distinguished Peruvian tenor Ernesto Palacio, who excelled in the bel canto repertoire. "He was singing there and I didn't waste the opportunity to audition for him. He said, 'Hmm,' nothing else, but he was impressed, and told me, 'I want you to do a career in opera.'”

"Palacio sang until 1998. He had sung for 25 years so I said, 'Listen, you should be my manager.'" Which he did, as well as his teacher and mentor. They did an album together, and Flórez dropped his voice studies at Curtis in the last year. "It was enough Ernesto telling me on the phone. I would play him recordings of my rehearsals, and he would say this and that. He changed me and really brought my voice out. He was very important in helping me to make the right decisions."

During his studies he also did masterclasses in 1995 with Marilyn Horne. "When she heard me she said, 'Son, you should be doing a career. She took me to New York to audition for an agent. In 1995 maybe I wasn't ready, but she saw the potential."

Like all singers, Flórez' voice has changed in the last decades. Early on he faced a lot of pressure to take on heavier tenor roles like those in Verdi operas, winning praise from some of his colleagues for sticking to what best suits his voice. But "around age 38, there was a slight change to my voice, and very much in the centre. That made it possible to start thinking about romantic French operas and certain roles: Guillaume Tell, Romeo, Werther and Edgardo.”

He's remained cautious. "Even if change in a voice is light, and people maybe don't notice it, that slight change is for singers a bit of an earthquake." He sang his first Verdi role in 2008, the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto. But after that “experiment” put it aside saying the role pushed his voice a bit, adding "you have to sing alongside huge voices and unconsciously you start to compete."

But he's since taken up Verdi again performing the Duke in Dresden and Vienna, Fenton in Falstaff at La Scala and he debuted Alfredo in La Traviata at the Met and has just sung the role in Vienna in a Simon Stone production.

As popular as Flórez is in Europe and North America, nothing compares with his status in Peru, where he's a superstar, a national icon. When he married his wife Julia in the cathedral in Lima, "There were thousands of people in the piazza outside the church, it was live on national television, and the president was there. They even cancelled the football, which is a big deal in South America, because there weren't enough police."

His love for his country and its music led him to create the foundation Sinfonia por el Perú in 2011. "I went to Venezuela to sing a concert with Dudamel and visited the program [El Sistema]. I was so struck and moved by how music could change and improve society. I said to myself, 'I have to do this in Peru.'"

The non-profit organization funds choral and orchestral programs for disadvantaged children across the country. "Sinfonía por el Perú might be the most important thing that has happened from [me being] an opera singer. [I realised] that music can change lives and save disadvantaged kids, who often end up on dangerous paths. Through the collective making of music, they can improve their lives. We have done studies that are proof of this, that in every aspect they are better students and better citizens."

To benefit the foundation and to celebrate the centennial of Chabuca Granda and the bicentennial of Peru's independence, he released an album in 2021 titled Trialogando which explores one of his oldest passions, música criolla, a folkloric genre with African, European and Latin roots. Using the latest technology, Flórez sings with Granda, on tracks from her famous 1968 album Dialogando. The last track is the famous song La Flor de la Canela, the unofficial anthem of Lima.

Here's hoping Juan Diego Flórez will bring his guitar to Australia so we can hear some of the Latin passion that sparked this great singer's career.

Mairi Nicolson presents Lunchtime Concert, The Opera Show and Sunday Opera on ABC Classic.