Juan Diego Florez debuts with most latin version of Romeo in Lima

Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Florez has made his debut in the leading role of the opera “Romeo and Juliet”, by French composer Charles Gounod, in his hometown, Lima.

Shakespeare’s classic tale of tragic love was performed last in Peru’s capital at least 100 years ago and Florez wanted to present it in Lima’s Grand National Theater Sunday before taking it to Europe’s main stages.

A production of the Municipal Theater of Santiago, the opera premiered last year and will be staged in Lima on Nov. 19, 22 and 25 as part of the seventh edition of the Alejandro Granda International Opera Festival.

Performing in his native country, Florez, 41, who portrayed an energetic, temperamental Romeo with a Latin twist, was met with thunderous applause from the audience.

This is not the first time Florez has taken time out of his packed schedule to perform exclusively in Lima.

In 2001 he played Idreno in Semiramide, the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto in 2008 and Arnold in William Tell last year.

Florez has picked a stellar cast led by the young and promising Russian soprano Venera Gimadieva, 30, personally chosen by the Peruvian tenor after he heard her at a New Year’s concert in Moscow.

Gimadieva captivated the theater right from the first scene, combining her beauty with the delicacy of her voice, which perfectly matched Florez’s in the four most harmonious and romantic duets of the opera, in which Romeo and Juliet declare their undying love for each other.

Completing the cast were Russian bass Sergey Artamonov in the role of father Lorenzo and Russian baritone Alexey Lavrov in the role of Maercucio, thus rounding off a range of voices key to the balance and harmony of the opera.

Under the musical direction of Venezuelan Manuel LopezGomez, the scenography of French JeanLouis Pichon contributed to accentuate emotions in an iconic setting which trades Juliet’s classic balcony for a swing of flowers on which the young lover descends to Romeo while both declare their love for each other.

In 2016, Florez plans to present Werther by Jules Massenet in Peru and La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi the following year.

Before that however, in 2015, he is set to perform in La Donna del Lago in New York’s Metropolitan, in Don Pasquale in Vienna and in Othello in Milan.