Juan Diego Flórez Raises Over $100K For Peru At Vienna Concert

Vittorio Grigolo and Aida Garifullina join Juan Diego Flórez for a worthy cause in Vienna.

"The audience filled the Vienna State Opera and applauded tenor Juan Diego Florez enthusiastically and often during a benefit concert he gave on behalf of 'Sinfonia por el Peru,' the foundation he created in 2011 to help poor children in his homeland. Sources at the Viennese theater told Efe that the box office would easily surpass 100,000 euros ($106,000), from which only technical costs would have to be deducted, since all the artists donated their services. 'It's a dream come true that we can now say Sinfonia por el Peru is going so well it's changing the lives of many, many children in Peru,' Florez told Efe during one of the rehearsals before the gala performance. The tenor noted that big international opera stars would share the stage with young musicians from different social programs around the world, all motivated by the concept of transforming society through music. The gala served to present the Friends of Juan Diego Florez, an association created to support Sinfonia por el Peru and similar projects. Among those friends were Cecilia Bartoli, Russian soprano Aida Garifullina, tenor Celso Albelo and baritone Michele Pertusi, among others. Unfortunately absent was soprano Anna Netrebko, who announced Saturday that she would be unable to take part in the gala. Sinfonia por el Peru's 15 branches in different parts of the country are teaching some 2,500 children and young people living in unfavorable conditions to use music as a way to escape poverty, violence and child labor." [Source]

Vienna Opera Ball 2015 Shows No Political Bias To Sopranos

Dominique Meyer, Director of the Vienna State
Opera, flanked by Olga Bezsmertna (left)
 and Aida Garifullina (right)

Two sopranos from political hotbed countries performed for the 2015 Wiener Opernball: Ukranian Olga Bezsmertna (singing "Dove sono" from Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro) and Russian Aida Garifullina (singing "Je veux vivre" from Gounod's Romeo et Juliette). "The Crimean crisis was an international crisis in 2014 that instigated the ongoing dispute involving Russia and Ukraine over the control of the Crimean Peninsula, culminating in its annexation by the Russian Federation and incorporation as two separate federal subjects. The crisis was part of the wider 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine which also includes the Donbass region of Ukraine. The current international status of Crimea and Sevastopol as federal subjects of the Russian Federation is only explicitly recognized by five UN member states, other than Russia. All other countries recognize Crimea as part of Ukraine....On 17 April 2014 Russian president Vladimir Putin confirmed Russian involvement in Crimea, remarking that 'of course, Russian servicemen backed the Crimean self-defense forces.' In an interview on 22 January 2015 Igor Girkin, one of the major 'Russian self-defence' commanders in Crimea at that time, explained that the 'overwhelming national support for

Aida Garifullina singing Juliette's Waltz

the self-defence' as portrayed by the Russian media was fiction, and they actually had to 'forcibly drive the deputies to vote [to join Russia].' Majority of the law enforcement, administration and army did not support the 'self-defence' (one notable exception being Berkut) and only the presence of regular Russian army in Crimea 'made the whole thing work.'" [Source] Politically-neutral Spanish baritone Carlos Álvarez also sang, "Fin ch'han dal vino" from Mozart's Don Giovanni, at the Opera Ball. See more photos of the performances, as well as other opera attendees including Angelika Kirschlager, Isabel Leonard and Naomi Campbell, after the jump.