"You know El Sistema in Venezuela? Well I’m trying to do the same in Peru. We have the same poor children that need rescuing through music", he was quoted as saying to the UK The Times daily.

Flórez explained he went to Venezuela and did a concert with Gustavo Dudamel, and took the chance to study the system in detail. Then, he convinced Maestro Abreu, the founder of El Sistema, to come to Lima.

He assured both visited President Alan Garcia and many big companies raising fund to run the project.

"We raised money, and now it has taken off. If you’re famous in your own country, it’s nice to use that fame to open doors and make something good happen”, he added.

The Times says that "inevitably, hundred of hacks reached for the phrase “the next Pavarotti” referring to Flórez, but the daily considers this is unfair.

"That wasn’t just lazy journalism. It was also unfair on both gents. Flórez is lithe, slim, with Latinate good looks (somewhere between Tom Cruise and the footballer Ronaldo). To give himself energy before a show he eats not mountains of pasta, Pavarotti style, but a couscous-like Peruvian dish called quinoa (“such a complete food that Nasa feeds it to astronauts,” he said.

His voice is trimmer, more agile, than Pavarotti's. And his field is the bel canto operas of Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini — lots of whizzing about at a mad altitude — not heroic gut-busters such as Nessun dorma, he added.

But most of all, Flórez doesn’t want to be the next Pavarotti or so, said the daily.
 
"Pavarotti was different from any other singer before or since. His story was something that happened at a certain time because of a certain charisma in certain circumstances. For a while, opera was in every household. Now it’s not. And actually I’m happy that we are again a minority art.” he declared.

Flórez explained that to appreciate opera properly requires a certain sensibility. Not social status, not money, but sensibility for this music.

“Of course for a perfomer the public is like a fuel. But to appreciate opera properly requires a certain sensibility. Not social status, not money. Many of my fans are ordinary people who struggle to buy a ticket. But they have a sensibility for this music. If you try to reach out to a mass audience, you have to change the product so that everyone likes it. Then it stops being the real thing.”, he said.

The Times said Flórez is now a hero in his homeland. "His wedding in Lima last year, to a glamorous German-born Australian, was an astonishing four-hour affair, broadcast live on TV then immediately repeated".
 
“It was mad, I couldn’t control it!. But all countries need role models, Peru especially. It’s a Third World country really.”

(END) INT/LVT