The Peruvian tenor
Juan Diego Flórez could probably have gotten away with almost any kind of crossover release when
Bésame Mucho appeared in the fall of 2018, and the basic concept of the album -- songs that he had heard during his youth, often sung by his father -- was a natural. The program offers an attractive mixture of songs from various Latin American countries, including Peru, and of various levels of familiarity, with the title track at the top of the list (although non-Latin listeners may not know that it's one of the few major popular song hits with a female composer, Consuelo Velázquez). The album is more than the sum of these rather common parts, however. The cover shows
Flórez with a guitar, which is inaccurate; he doesn't play the guitar on the album. He does, however, scale his voice down to guitar dimensions, accompanied by guitarists, players of other Latin American stringed instruments (the backing group shifts nicely according to the songs' national origins), and in a few cases piano or a small chamber group. In almost no cases does his dynamic level rise above moderate, and there is no hint of the operatic treatments popular songs generally receive from stars of the operatic stage. You could sample almost anywhere, but try the old Colombian song La pollera colora, for an idea of his sound here, and also for his generous sampling of songs from various countries. He says in a note that he sings these songs to his children, and the album has that delightful flavor. The end result is a standout among opera crossover albums, with fine engineering support from Sony staff working in, of all places, the Casino Baumgarten in Vienna. Highly recommended. ~ James Manheim