Juan diego florez biography of william tell

For many listeners, tenors reign as the kings of opera. When they hit the highest notes, it sends thrills through the audience. “I think people love high notes,” says Peruvian-born Juan Diego Flórez, one of contemporary opera’s greatest tenors. “The notes ring in their ears, and it’s exciting.”

In a video interview with EuroNews, Flórez explains why tenors often function like a circus high-wire act. French tenor Benjamin Bernheim adds, “The bet we make on a tenor is, will he succeed?”

The art of the modern tenor arose in Italy, when composer Gioachino Rossini thrust the tenor’s voice into the spotlight. “Before Rossini, the main stars of opera were the sopranos and the castrati,” said Flórez, who specializes in the bel canto operas of Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti (and who will appear with Vincenzo Scalera in recital Jan. 31 at Symphony Center). “But with Rossini, the castrati were abolished. So he gave the star parts to someone who would be similar to the voice of the castrati, the tenors and the mezzo-sopranos.”

In 1831, with Rossini’s William Tell, a sensation happened. French tenor Gilbert Duprez astounded audiences with his revolutionary delivery of the high C. “Duprez was rehearsing i

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Gerald Finley gave a masterpiece of a performance in the title role.Illustration by Golden Cosmos

Nothing in the brilliant operatic career of Gioachino Rossini became him like the leaving it. When, in 1829, “Guillaume Tell” had its première, at the Paris Opéra, the composer was thirty-seven; he had written some forty operas and attained wealth and fame. Although he went on composing for decades—his “Stabat Mater,” completed in 1841, and “Petite Messe Solennelle,” from 1863, showed how much music remained in him—“Tell” was his final opera. Biographers have long debated the reasons for Rossini’s withdrawal, failing to reach consensus. We are left with a gnomic remark that he reportedly made in 1860, eight years before his death: “I decided that I had something better to do, which was to remain silent.”

The last scene of “Tell” is, not by accident, colossal and sublime. The titular hero has helped the cantons of Switzerland rise up against Hapsburg oppression and, in the process, won the famous archery contest involving an apple balanced on his son’s head. As the sun breaks through the clouds, revealing ice-capped peaks, Tell exclaims, “Everything here changes and grows in grandeur!” His son, Jemmy, adds, “In the distance, what an immense horizon!” The change of weather is

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