At the beginning, Juan Diego focused on pop,
rock and Peruvian music. He wrote his own songs and sang in piano bars,
frequented by his schoolmates in Lima. In 1989, the young singer won Peru’s
first Festival of Song for Peace.
In 1990, he started his professional studies
at Peru’s National Conservatory of Music. At that time, he didn’t have in mind
to be a classical musician. But the experiences of those first months were the
beginning for his vocation. Shortly after beginning his studies, Juan Diego
began taking singing lessons with Andrés Santa María, director of Peru’s Coro
Nacional. The Coro had a decisive part in his musical development, giving him
the invaluable experience of performing music by the greatest classical
composers at a professional level. He couldn’t have hoped for a better start.
In 1993 Juan Diego won a scholarship to the
prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He studied there until
1996, and had the opportunity to sing in a number of fully staged complete
operas.
In 1996, Juan Diego auditioned in Bologna for
the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro. Since then, opera houses around the world
set their sights on the young tenor, including the most famous of all: La
Scala. Juan Diego made his La Scala debut on 7 December 1996. He has
appeared at all the world’s opera houses, concert halls and music festivals,
including the Metropolitan in New York.
La Fille du Regiment - Ah mes amis
In 2007, Juan Diego made history at La Scala
when he broke a 70-year-old taboo and gave the first encore in the theatre
since 1933, for the audience’s delight. The aria in question was “Ah! mes amis”
from Donizetti’s La Fille du régiment, renowned for its nine high
Cs. He repeated the feat a few months later, in 2008, at the Met, after a
number of years in which no encores had been heard.