28 Quotes by Juan Diego Florez

I played the guitar. When I was 14, I composed songs - Paul McCartney-style things. I had a rock band - we'd compete in festivals.

I wouldn't be me if my repertoire wasn't bel canto.

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.

Around age 38, there was a slight change to my voice, and very much in the center. That made it possible to start thinking about certain roles: Guillaume Tell, Romeo, Edgardo. These roles require a fuller center.

Sometimes at my performances, I see Peruvian flags in the audience. I've never seen, when an Italian sings, people with Italian flags. But with Peru, it's different: because there are not many famous people, they really celebrate the ones they have.

In Peru, there is no theatre that produces an annual opera season, and though there is one orchestra in Lima, it's always struggling to survive. We shouldn't have just one orchestra, we should have 15, we should have 50! And you should start to build this from the children.

With El Sistema, you can create orchestras everywhere; then they can decide whether they want to become professional musicians. The aim is not only to create musicians, but to create people.

My parents never really wanted me to be a musician at all, because in Peru you don't earn any money that way. But when they realised it was genuinely what I wanted to do, they supported me always.

I don't push my voice; I try to keep a good technique, a natural way of singing, to sing from the breath, which is the main thing.