(Photo: Decca/Josef Gallauer)
Bel canto bon-ton Juan Diego Flórez is about to roll-out his first album in four years. We're not mad -- he's been raising two precious babies in the interim.
The all-French tracklist of L’Amour is a romantic mix of rare and well-known arias penned by Donizetti, Gounod, Boiëldieu and Massenet, among others, under Roberto Abbado and the orchestra/chorus of Bologna's Teatro Comunale.
Forget his epic 'mes amis' high Cs from La fille du régiment -- here the Peruvian tenor flips-off high Ds in 'Mes amis, écoutez l’histoire' from Adolphe Adam’s Le Postillon de Lonjumeau.
You know you want the D.
By the way, we can't mention Flórez without mentioning Philip Gossett, who recently dropped knowledge at The New York Review of Books with a review of Evan Baker's new book on dramaturge and stage direction, which traces stagecraft from the seventeenth century to the present.
Now here's a teaser of Flórez's Massenet & Offenbach L'Amour bijoux.
Werther: Toute mon âme est là! Pourquoi me réveiller, ô soufflé de printemps
La belle Hélène: Au Mont Ida, trois déesses