From Newsday, January 2004

The world of opera is rank with fogies, old and young, forever yammering about the lost, lamented "golden age" of singing. Sunday's Alice Tully Hall debut recital by tenor Juan Diego Flórez was tailor-made to shake the nostalgic sureties of this backward-looking crowd.

Flórez's short but stirring program—made half again as long by the five encores his audience demanded—was a display of vocalism so technically sure, heartfelt, poised and surpassingly beautiful that it left me wondering whether we might not need to acknowledge a new era of great singing: the age of Flórez.

Just 31, the Peruvian tenor has the chiseled features and elegant composure of the aristocrats painted by Raphael. Like those Renaissance lords', his gestures are few but telling; and like Maria Callas, he needs only a few notes to sketch a character or zero in on a composer's style.

Novelist Alessandro Baricco famously called Callas "the Guernica of vocalism," an explosion held in check. The more Apollonian Flórez unfurls his compact, burnished tone with a freedom and energy that suggest the ecstacy of Dionysius.

Flórez begain Mozart's concert aria "Misero! O sogno" with a sigh that swelled up out of nothingness. The shadow of anguish darkened his face and timbre as he railed against the "thousand phantoms" of his "dreadful abode." Shortcomings? It was hard to believe that Mozart's unnamed character, as portrayed by this assured young man, would not somehow emerge triumphant.

Flórez brought a Callas-like sense of energy-within-repose to Bellini's "Ma rendi pur contento." His performance of Tebaldo's aria from I Capuleti ed i Montecchi was alive with choice details: flashing tone for acciaro ("sword"); a verbal caress on cor ("heart"); the reprise, breathless with longing, of Tebaldo's closing declaration of love for Juliet.

Where Flórez's Bellini was inward and brooding, his Rossini stood out for its decorum: the long, effortlessly graceful lines of "Deh, tu m'assisti amore" and the brilliance and evenness of tone of Otello's "Che ascolto, ohimé," capped by a volley of vocal fireworks that elicited gasps from the audience.

His Gluck was sublime, from the exquisitely tapered phrases of "O del mio dolce ardor"—one long sigh of yearning and bliss—to the stylized grief of Orphée's lament. While Flórez brought a manly determination to "L'espoir renait," not even he could make a persuasive case for this clattery display piece.

A brief set of Peruvian songs, including Rosa Mercedes Ayarze de Morales' sultry "Malhaya," raised hopes that Flórez would devote a future program to the riches of this literature.

He sang his trademark aria, "Ah, mes amis!" from Donizetti's La fille du régiment, with the expected virtuosity and so much more: a dreamy swoon on "l'amour," and a disarming incredulity and swagger as the would-be soldier Tonio pictures his glorious future. It was pure, dazzling joy and the ideal sendoff into the age of Flórez.