Tanya Gold interviewed Juan Diego Florez in Pesaro for yesterday's Sunday Times. "I love Florez the interviewee: the conventions of PR just bounce off him" she says. "He doesn’t see much, but what he does, he tells". Like what?
He always seems immaculately prepared, so it's surprising to hear him describe himself in the interview as "a bit of a lazy kind." “Sometimes I find myself in the last rehearsals of a new opera and I don’t know the words,” he says, although he adds “From now on I would like to prepare more.” What's more, he is always late for rehearsal, and says Natalie Dessay is furious about it. Could Natalie be one of the “bats”, as he apparently refers to divas?
He reveals his wedding venue, Lima's cathedral, was not his idea but his agent's - “I tried not to have it on TV,” he pleads.
And although he follows a vegetarian diet - his wife's idea - JDF is clearly no health freak. He smokes a cigar 'sometimes'.
But perhaps the most interesting confession is found at the foot of the page, where the Sunday Times reveals that Tanya Gold's trip to Pesaro was paid for by Rosenblatt Recitals. It's not unusual for celebrity interviews in exotic locales to be financed by those who benefit, but it's rare that the tit-for-tat is publicly acknowledged. Could the Sunday Times be turning over a new leaf? After all, who recently said "If we're going to have a transparent society, a transparent democracy, let's have everything out in the open”?
