Juan Jose Lopera

Medicine came first: Juan José Lopera qualified as a doctor and practised for three years before leaving Colombia for Europe and the opera house. His territory is bel canto and Mozart — Nemorino and Ernesto, Don Ramiro, Ferrando, Don Ottavio, Belmonte, Tonio. They have taken him to the Vienna State Opera, Covent Garden, the Bavarian State Opera, Zurich, Brussels, Madrid, Paris, Amsterdam and Tokyo. He settled in Munich in 1993 and entered the Bavarian State Opera's opera studio, won a prize at the ARD competition in 1994 and afterwards joined the Tyrolean State Theatre in Innsbruck. Count Almaviva in Il barbiere di Siviglia belongs to the same repertoire, and at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro he sang Peleo in Le nozze di Teti e di Peleo in 2001.